WASHINGTON - The United States and Pakistan are making ‘diligent progress’ in their talks aimed at restoring the Pakistani land routes that transport NATO supplies into landlocked Afghanistan, a White House spokesman has said.

“We continue to work with Pakistan on this issue. We did not anticipate that the supply line issue was going to be resolved prior to the summit. And our teams continue to meet and we are making diligent progress,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told a news briefing.
He was asked if it was a failure of President Barack Obama that the Pakistani routes’ resumption did not happen during the NATO summit in Chicago.
“We have said that, the government of Pakistan has said that and we expect it to happen,” Carney said.
“The fact is Pakistan says it wants to resolve this; we obviously are interested in resolving it; it will be resolved, we are confident. We didn’t anticipate it would be resolved prior to the summit. We are continuing to work towards its resolution,” Carney said, adding there is no question of President Obama being disappointed on this.
“How could he be disappointed by - you are basically setting up a straw man that says it wasn’t resolved before the summit. I just told you we didn’t expect it to be resolved before or during the summit,” he said.
“He (Obama) met briefly with President Zardari. There was no expectation for it to be resolved during the summit. This is being worked on diligently by representatives of both governments and we expect them to be resolved,” Carney said.
Pakistan closed those routes in protest when US aircraft killed 24 Pakistani soldiers at Salala along the Afghan border in November.