ISLAMABAD, July 6: An agreement on Nato ground transit routes reopened earlier this week after a seven-month blockade, may soon be replaced by a new bilateral logistics pact between the United States and Pakistan.

The routes were reopened under the agreement that existed at the time of closure of supplies on Nov 26 in response to a US attack on the Salala border chekpost which left 24 soldiers dead.

“We have resumed our relations from the point where we left in November last year,” US Deputy Chief of Mission Richard A. Hoagland said at a ceremony while referring to the arrangement governing the resumed supplies. However, diplomatic sources say that the reopening under the previous arrangement was done as a stop gap arrangement after the government agreed to permit Nato cargo to pass through the country.

Pakistan and the US are now negotiating a Memorandum of Understanding for transit of US cargo.Other Nato countries, if interested, may later accede to it.

“The idea behind the new agreement is to manage the transit traffic,” an official said.

The negotiations on the new arrangement, which started in early May, continued till last month and sources said that 90 per cent of the technical discussions had been completed.

“Now with the political decision taken, the MoU could be signed soon,” one source said, adding that it would go through the process set by parliament for signing of any agreement with a foreign government.

It wasn’t immediately clear why the two sides have opted for a bilateral agreement instead of the one for all coalition countries as was the case in the past. Two plausible explanations are that negotiators might be looking at the post-2014 scenario when Nato would have withdrawn its forces from Afghanistan and it would be mainly the US that would be using the route. Secondly, as one could make out from statements of the Pakistani leadership prior to the decision to reopen the routes, they don’t want strains with the US at any stage in future to affect their ties with other countries involved in Afghanistan.

While presiding over a DCC meeting which approved the reopening of routes, Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf said: “The continued closure of supply lines not only impinges on our relationship with the US, but also on our relations with 49 other member states of Nato/Isaf.”

This is a scenario that the government is probably trying to avoid in future.

The sources confirmed that Pakistan and the US, as part of their talks on routes, had been discussing the US assistance for repair of roads being used for transporting the cargo for Afghanistan.

The discussions have been taking place with the ministry of finance and the National Highway Authority which has already identified several strips which needed repair. It is likely that the US, instead of directly funding the roads repair programme, might get it done through some international financial institution.