Pakistan reopens NATO line after U.S. apology

Pakistan is reopening NATO supply lines to Afghanistan after a seven-month dispute, saying that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton satisfied its demand to apologize for a clash that killed 24 Pakistani border troops.

Clinton said in a statement announcing the decision that she offered "deepest regrets" over the accidental killing of troops in the November incident during a conversation Tuesday with Pakistan's Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar.

The military supply routes have been shut as Pakistani officials demanded a U.S. apology for the killings and the two nations negotiated. The closing forced the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to send material and equipment from the north, through Central Asia, at an added cost that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has estimated at about $100 million a month.

"Foreign Minister Khar and I acknowledged the mistakes that resulted in the loss of Pakistani military lives," Clinton said Tuesday. "We are sorry for the losses suffered by the Pakistani military."

While Clinton didn't use the word "apologize," Qamar Zaman Kaira, Pakistan's information minister said in Islamabad the routes are being reopened after the United States was forced "to apologize to the Pakistani people and its nation," he said.

A Pentagon investigation found in December that U.S. forces raiding an Afghan village near the border took heavy machine-gun fire from inside Pakistan and thought it came from insurgents because the U.S. ground commander had been told there were no Pakistani troops in the area. Return fire from U.S. helicopters killed the 24 Pakistani troops.

Asked Tuesday if the United States agreed to pay more than previously for use of the Pakistan supply routes, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said, "We are paying the exact same amount as we were paying before."

Senate Armed Services Committee chairman Sen. Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, said in a June interview that Pakistan had been demanding the United States pay as much as $5,000 per container of NATO supplies shipped over its routes, up from about $250 each before the routes were reopened.