MUNICH: Chelsea stunned Bayern Munich to win the Champions League for the first time as Didier Drogba struck the decisive penalty in a shootout at the Allianz Arena following a tension-soaked final which ended 1-1 after extra time on Saturday.

Veteran Ivorian Drogba, who had equalised for Chelsea two minutes from the end of normal time, rolled the winning kick past Manuel Neuer as the visitors edged the shootout 4-3 after Bastian Schweinsteiger’s last kick for Bayern had hit the post.

Russian owner Roman Abramovic, whose eyes have been fixed on Europe’s biggest prize since buying the club, could barely contain his joy as Frank Lampard, skipper on the night in place of the suspended John Terry, held the trophy aloft on a memorable night in Bavaria.

It had looked an unlikely climax when Bayern, playing in their home stadium, were finally rewarded for their dominance when Tomas Mueller made the breakthrough they craved with an 83rd minute header past Petr Cech.

Within touching distance of lifting the famous trophy for the first time since 2001, all Bayern’s hard graft was undone with two minutes remaining when Drogba met Juan Mata’s corner with a thumping header past Neuer.

Bayern, four-times winners, were deflated and extra time could not separate the sides despite Bayern earning a penalty which Arjen Robben had saved by Cech.

Chelsea lost to Manchester United in the 2008 final on penalties but erased that painful memory by holding their nerve to become London’s first European champions and guarantee a place in next season’s competition despite only finishing sixth in the Premier League.

“I believe a lot in destiny. It was written a long time ago. This team is amazing and I dedicate this cup to all the managers and players we had before,” Drogba said.

“(My equaliser) changed the game. Life is fantastic.”

Stand-in manager Roberto Di Matteo, who still does not know whether he will be retained next season, praised the heart of his players who have continually defied the odds.

“We have a group of players with a big heart…that was the only way we could achieve this trophy,” the Italian told ITV.

“Drogba has been incredible for this club. It’s just been an incredible three months, intense and demanding for everybody.”

Bayern were left to rue a third near miss this season after finishing runners-up in the Bundesliga and the German Cup but this was the harshest of blows and one that brought back bitter memories if their last-gasp defeat at the hands of Manchester United in the Nou Camp in 1999.

“That’s football,” Bayern’s goalscorer Mueller said. “We have seen it before in the past – that it is not necessarily the better side that has the cup in its hands after a match.”

Little doubt

For much of a compelling, if not eye-catching final, there was little doubt that Bayern were the better side as they poured forward, only to be denied by a solid wall of blue or their own wastefulness in front of goal.

Both Thomas Muller and Mario Gomez snatched at clear chances as Chelsea rode their luck and manned the barricades as they did in the Nou Camp during their epic semi-final against Barcelona.

Mueller lashed one volley wide from Ribery’s cross while the disappointing Gomez showed a surprising lack of composure on several occasions.

Bayern continued to press after the break and did have the ball in the net after 53 minutes only for the celebrations to be cut short as Ribery was adjudged to be offside after Robben’s scuffed shot arrived at his feet.

Chelsea soaked up almost constant Bayern possession but in Drogba they still had some menace in attack, the Ivorian failing to connect with one presentable chance after 73 minutes as the tension reached unbearable levels in the stadium.

Chelsea’s dogged resistance snapped in the 83rd minute when Mueller arrived at the back post to bounce a header into the net from Toni Kroos’s deep cross.

Muller was buried under a pile of his joyous team mates as Bayern appeared to have clinched the trophy but there was to be a sting in the tail.

With two minutes left on the clock, Chelsea earned their first corner of the night and when the ball was swung in Drogba climbed high to crash a header past Neuer.

It was a bitter blow for Bayern and Chelsea sensed their moment, pushing for an unlikely winner in the closing moments as the momentum swung in their favour.

Five minutes into extra time Drogba gave Bayern the perfect chance to go back in front when he clipped the heels of Ribery to concede a penalty but Petr Cech came to his side’s rescue with a superb stop to keep out Robben’s penalty.

Fate was beckoning Roberto Di Matteo’s team though and they were given another let-off when substitute Olic’s cross-shot rolled across a gaping goal with Cech helpless.

The night still seemed to be heading Bayern’s way when they moved 3-1 ahead in the penalty shootout after Mata missed Chelsea’s first spot kick but Olic failed with Bayern’s fourth effort and when Schweinsteiger struck the post the stage was left for Drogba to write his name into Chelsea folkore, a feat he accomplished with consummate ease.

The elimination of Ledet — through audience voting and not by the judges — sets up a final showdown between Sanchez and Phillips to determine who will be named the next “American Idol”, a distinction that has belonged to hitmakers such as Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood, among others.

Sanchez has impressed the judges from the beginning of the current season with her technical mastery of music, despite being the youngest contestant at age 16. Singer-songwriter Phillips has won plaudits for bringing his own distinctive style of guitar playing music to other artists’ songs.

Executive producer Nigel Lythgoe on Friday called both finalists “very quiet people” off stage, but said they were very focused on winning the title and a guaranteed recording contract.

He said Sanchez, who was saved from elimination by the judges in April after getting the fewest votes from the public, “needs a song that is going to have a magic moment, that she hits that note, that she grabs us.”

Phillips, who has an army of young female fans, should leave aside the mid-tempo, lesser known numbers he favours for next week’s three-song performance finale in Los Angeles. “He has got to go out there and do something that grabs that audience and makes them stand up and pick up a telephone at home and vote for him. I think he needs to find a song that people know,” Lythgoe said.

The finale will consist of a two-hour performance episode on Tuesday, May 22, followed by a results episode on Wednesday, May 23. The winner will receive a recording contract.

Now in its 11^th season, “Idol” continues to be the most-watched reality show in the United States. Audiences vote for their favorite performers by phone and text message each week as contestants are challenged by a variety of musical styles.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 20^th, 2012.

KATHMANDU: For the second time, a 73-year-old Japanese woman has become the world’s oldest woman to climb Mount Everest, repeating her own record set 10 years ago, the company that organised the climb said on Saturday.

Tamae Watanabe reached the 8,850 meter (29,035 feet) summit with a Japanese partner and three Nepali Sherpa guides on Saturday morning, said Ang Tshering Sherpa, who runs the Asian Trekking company, which provided logistics to the team.

“Watanabe and other climbers are in good physical condition. They are descending to their last camp which is located at an altitude of 8,300 meters (27,230 feet),” he said.

Watanabe, who first became the oldest woman to climb the mountain in 2002 at the age of 63, bettered her own record and set a new climbing feat, Sherpa said. She scaled the peak from the Tibetan side of the mountain.

Mount Everest straddles the Nepal-Tibet border. It has been scaled by 3,700 people since New Zealander Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay Sherpa first climbed it in 1953.

The list of climbers includes a blind person, a man with an artificial limb, a 13-year-old American boy and a 76-year-old Nepali man.

About 400 climbers are at camps on both sides of the mountain waiting for improved weather to make their summit attempts. Nepali tourism ministry officials said dozens of mountaineers had also climbed from the Nepali side of the mountain.

ITALY: A proposal to levy a tax on cats and dogs that stunned Italy on Friday turned out to be all bark and no bite after a wave of popular anger saw it withdrawn on the same day it was made public.

Italy was abuzz for hours after local media reported that a parliamentary commission had proposed a tax on domestic “animals of affection” to raise revenue for debt-strapped cities and towns.

Protests were voiced by everyone from animal rights groups – who said it would prompt more people to abandon animals – to politicians who called it everything from “grotesque” to “surreal” to “idiotic” to “shameful”.

There was so much reaction – all of it incredulous – that one Italian agency ran nearly 40 news items on the proposal in less than four hours.

The proposal was withdrawn by early Friday evening however, and it seemed everyone on the commission where it was discussed was denying its paternity.

“The only thing that’s left to tax are wives and children,” said parliamentarian Domenico Scilipoti.

Italy, like many other countries across the euro zone, is struggling to revive its economy and reduce its public debt, a predicament that has prompted the country’s lawmakers to try to dream up new revenue-raising measures.

BAHRAIN: Bahrain rejected on Friday an independent medical report that says a Shi’ite man found dead this year was tortured by electric shock, a finding that counters the Gulf Arab state’s claim to have improved its rights record as democracy protests continue.

Bahrain has been under pressure from Western governments to implement rights and others reforms after it tried to crush the protests last year with martial law and bringing Saudi troops. Activists say five people, all Shi’ites, have died in suspicious circumstances this year. One of them is Yousef Mowali, 23, whose body was found in January by the sea in northern Bahrain two days after he went missing.

The interior ministry said he had not been in police custody and an official autopsy said he died from drowning. But Mowali’s family say they were not happy with the way the authorities handled the case at the time. They say a local police station had acknowledged Mowali’s presence to them, and the body showed signs of abuse when they were allowed to see it.

The family’s lawyer this week handed public prosecutors an independent autopsy carried out by the Denmark-based International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (IRCT) after Mowali’s body was released for burial in January. It said Mowali was likely unconscious when he drowned and there were signs of abuse, including wounds that lab tests carried out on samples taken to Istanbul suggested were caused by electric torture.

“The idea that the death was the result of unconsciousness due to electrocution is only an assumption and the report did not take into consideration some factors like the presence of prescription medication for schizophrenia,” a statement on the state news agency BNA said on Friday, citing the public prosecution office.

It said the prosecutors want to speak to the Turkish doctor who entered Bahrain in January on a tourist visa to carry out the IRCT report to question her about the findings of a second autopsy which did not have official approval.

“Our concern right now is to understand the discrepancy between these two reports and make sure the truth prevails,” BNA said in its English version of the report, suggesting charges could be pressed for conducting an unlicenced medical exam.

Mowali’s family says he was a quiet and apolitical youth, who suffered from schizophrenia and lived with his family.

“I was hoping for a response that would take the matter more seriously. It’s more of a media and political statement,” the family’s lawyer, Nawaf al-Sayed, said.

“For the family it’s not a game with a winner and loser. They lost their son and would like to see justice.”

Bahrain remains in turmoil with weekly mass protests and clashes between riot police and Shi’ite youths who complain of political and economic marginalisation, charges the government denies.

The ruling Al Khalifa family has so far rejected opposition calls for an elected government. The body of a protester was found dead, riddled with birdshot wounds, on the rooftop of a farm last month, the morning after he was involved in clashes with riot police.

GUANTANAMO BAY: A US military judge is considering splitting up the trial of five Guantanamo prisoners accused of plotting the September 11 attacks because of conflicts in scheduling and strategy, lawyers in the case said on Friday.

The defendants, including the professed mastermind of the hijacked plane attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, are to appear in court at the Guantanamo Bay US naval base in Cuba on June 12 for the next pretrial hearing in the death penalty case. Lawyers for two defendants have asked to delay the hearing because of scheduling conflicts while lawyers for another do not want a delay.

The judge, Army Colonel James Pohl, ordered prosecutors to file legal briefs by May 24 showing cause why the case should not be severed. He did not indicate how many separate trials he is considering.

“The judge already is seeing that with five different clients and five defense teams, scheduling is going to be very difficult,” said James G. Connell III, an attorney for defendant Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, who is Mohammed’s nephew.

The defendants are accused of charges that include conspiring with al Qaeda, attacking civilians in violation of the laws of war and murdering 2,976 people. It is the first multi-defendant prosecution in the Guantanamo tribunals and the various defense teams might pursue different strategies that could benefit one defendant at the expense of another.

“What is mitigating for some people might be aggravating for other people,” Connell said.

Mohammed is the best known among the defendants and the self-described mastermind. The others – Ali, Yemeni captives Walid bin Attash and Ramzi Binalshibh and Saudi prisoner Mustafa Ahmed al Hawsawi – are accused of helping provide money and training for the hijackers.

Hawsawi’s attorney, Navy Commander Walter Ruiz, said he had not decided whether to ask for a separate trial. “Any trial whether joint or severed needs to be before a properly constituted court and with properly resourced counsel (something which the government has decidedly failed to do at this juncture),” Ruiz said by email.

SAN FRANCISCO, USA: The historic initial public offering (IPO) of Facebook Inc did not go as planned on Friday, as the social networking company’s sky-high valuation combined with trading glitches left the stock languishing near its offering price at the market close. Facebook shares, which opened up 11 percent, closed at $38.23 after a nail-biting last half hour of trading when the shares dipped to their $38 IPO price.

Most investors had predicted a first-day pop. More than 576 million shares changed hands, setting a trading volume record for US market debuts. The company had priced its IPO at the top end of its target range and increased the size of the offering, becoming the first US company to go public with a valuation greater than $100 billion.

Facebook founder and Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, 28, who retains voting control of the company and whose personal net worth is now about $20 billion, marked the debut of his company’s shares at the company’s Silicon Valley campus, symbolically ringing the opening bell for stock trading on Friday morning. Wearing his trademark black hoodie, Zuckerberg hugged and high-fived Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, who is credited with bringing crucial business discipline to a company founded in a Harvard dorm room eight years ago.

The area outside Facebook’s offices was packed with throngs of photographers, more than a dozen television trucks, and a TV news helicopter hovering overhead. Outside of Nasdaq headquarters in New York, crowds also gathered, even as exchange officials struggled to sort out technical problems related to the huge volume of orders, which delayed the start of trading in the stock by 45 minutes and left investors guessing for more than two hours about whether their buy and sell orders had actually been executed.

The shares attracted interest from investors of all stripes, reflecting the social network’s extraordinary growth and deep store of information about its 900 million users. The IPO minted thousands of new paper millionaires among Facebook’s 3,500 employees — and a handful of billionaires among its founders and early investors. But the stock debut took place in a weak market, and traders said the smaller-than-expected first-day pop reflected the very aggressive pricing of the offering and a last-minute, near 25 percent increase in the number of shares being sold. Analyst predictions of first-day gains had ranged from 10 percent to 50 percent.

“The increase in size was a big negative factor for us,” said Tim Ghriskey, chief investment officer at Solaris Asset Management, who said he canceled some orders for the shares.

The IPO price was equivalent to more than 100 times historical earnings, compared with Apple Inc’s 14 times and Google Inc’s 19 times. For many investors that made it a risky bet.

“We have got some unhappy guys out there,” said Wayne Kaufman, chief market strategist at John Thomas Financial, a retail broker on Wall Street. “They were hoping for Facebook to be considerably better. I bet there are a lot of disappointed people in the market.”

Market participants said that in the final run-up to the IPO, much of the demand was from retail investors rather than institutions. When the stock fell to $38 on Friday morning, traders say the IPO’s lead underwriter Morgan Stanley stepped in to prevent the price from slipping below the IPO level.

From Facebook’s perspective, a small increase in the stock showed it was priced perfectly for Zuckerberg and early investors, who pocketed maximum gains and left little of the easy money on the table.

“You want to price the offering correctly. Institutional buyers get a little bump and the company raises the right amount of money,” said Kevin Hartz, co-founder and CEO of Eventbrite, an online ticketing startup that is integrated with Facebook’s platform.

“If the stock has a massive bump on day one that means you misread market demand and company does not raise the right amount of money.”

Battle of the giants

Facebook faces many challenges as it takes its place beside Google, Apple and Amazon.com Inc as one of the giant public companies defining the next-generation Internet economy.

Google in particular views Facebook as a mortal threat and is moving aggressively to integrate social networking features across its products. At the same time, scores of young companies are building new products and services, in some cases on top of the Facebook platform and in some cases in competition with it, and attracting huge amounts of investment capital.

A handful of such so-called Web 2.0 companies, including Zynga Inc, LinkedIn Corp, Yelp Inc and Groupon Inc, have already gone public, and others have been acquired by the industry giants. In a sign of the volatile nature of highly valued Internet stocks, all these shares fell on Friday in sympathy with Facebook’s weaker-than-expected debut. In particular, social gaming company Zynga, which relies on heavily on Facebook and also provides more than 10 percent of Facebook’s revenues, fell by more than 14 percent. In an indication of the land grab now under way in the Internet world, Facebook in April spent $1 billion to acquire Instagram, a tiny photo-sharing company with lots of users but no revenue.

A Facebook rival, social scrap-booking site Pinterest, raised money earlier this week at a valuation of $1.5 billion in a sign that venture capitalists and other private investors still see enormous potential in Web 2.0 companies. Facebook’s formidable assets include 900 million users around the world, many of whom spend hours a day on the site and share enormous amounts of personal information.

That in turn enables Facebook to target its advertising to peoples’ specific interests, and many analysts believe the huge store of personal information gives Facebook an advantage that Google and other cannot match.

“Literally everything you see on the Internet, you could see inside Facebook — but done with much more of the social graph built into it,” said Siva Kumar, CEO of e-commerce company TheFind. “In a way they operate the mall, and everybody in the mall will pay some way or the other to Facebook.”

Facebook posted $3.7 billion in revenue in 2011 and $1 billion in profit. Analysts say the company has untapped opportunities in mobile computing, and potentially other Internet services such as email and search. Zuckerberg, though unproven as a public company CEO, is widely admired as a product visionary who has done a masterful job in continually improving the Facebook experience.

Skeptics, though, note that only a small percentage of Facebook users respond to advertising on the site. Google retains a big advantage in that regard, because advertising related to specific Internet searches is by nature far more relevant and thus more valuable. In a sign of the challenges ahead for Facebook, the nation’s third-largest advertiser, General Motors Co, said last week that it was canceling its paid advertising on the site. Global Equities analyst Trip Chowdhry said the stock debut was “lackluster” because Facebook’s growth prospects do not justify a high stock valuation.

WASHINGTON: Just days before this weekend’s Nato summit, the United States remains short of its goal of raising $1.3 billion in security funds from its partners in Afghanistan, after a money-raising blitz failed to garner immediate contributions from allies facing fiscal and political pressures.

Who will pay for Afghanistan’s future security will be central when President Barack Obama hosts leaders from Nato and other nations in his hometown of Chicago for the two-day summit starting on Sunday that will outline the Western path out of the long war.

“There was some hope that the kitty would be full by Chicago. That may not happen but it doesn’t mean we won’t achieve that goal in the future,” a US official said.

“We expect a number of countries to pony up, and that’s a sign of progress toward sustaining (Afghan forces) in the years to come,” the official said.

Going into the weekend, the United States remains $300 million to $500 million short of that goal. Western nations, grappling with fiscal crisis and mindful of dwindling support for the war, are eager to chart a course out of Afghanistan, even as the Taliban continues to pose a serious threat to the weak, corrupt Afghan government.

Afghanistan’s growing national police and army are at the core of Nato’s strategy for removing most foreign troops by the end of 2014 without triggering the collapse of its Western-backed government. Keeping those forces armed and fighting in a country still heavily reliant on outside aid will cost an estimated $4 billion a year. To supplement American assistance, the Obama administration is asking its allies to provide $1.3 billion of that annually.

Nato Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, speaking in Brussels last month, said Chicago would not be a “pledging conference.”

But officials in Washington had hoped privately to secure those commitments before the summit, which is seen as an opportunity for Obama to brandish his foreign policy achievements before the November election. With other earlier goals for Chicago on hold – such as a once-hoped-for breakthrough in initial peace talks with the Taliban – a strong outside commitment to funding Afghan forces takes on more importance for Nato leaders at the summit.

Public and private pledges

Pledges made publicly and privately toward the goal now amount to $800 million to $1 billion. Of that Britain, Germany, and Australia have announced annual support for Afghan forces worth about $400 million combined. In addition, the Afghan government has committed $500 million a year.

A Nato official told reporters in Kabul this week the alliance “hopes” the $4.1 billion total goal can be met in Chicago.

While more support may be unveiled in the coming days, not all nations the United States has tapped have been ready to step forward. France, whose new president, Francois Hollande, has promised to accelerate the French departure from Afghanistan, is not expected to make a commitment at Chicago.

“Financial commitments cannot be made here,” a French diplomatic source said. “The US in some ways underestimated the complexity of the decision-making process in other capitals” in its push to raise that money, one Western diplomat said on condition of anonymity. “Although most ISAF members agree properly funding (Afghan forces) is critical, in the current fiscal and political climate, any new funding commitment is subject to an extensive debate. This meant it took longer to raise the funds than the US anticipated,” the diplomat said.

Obama dispatched his special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Marc Grossman, to European capitals this spring to press for commitments. But funding requests may have not been made to countries early enough.

“The economic problems in Europe and the United States, combined with the continued concerns about corruption inside of Afghanistan, makes it an uphill battle to get countries to make long-term commitments on funding for Afghanistan,” said Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.

Japan, another important ally that will host a conference on aid to Afghanistan this summer, has not yet come forward. Neither have Gulf allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Although the scenarios under consideration would cost the United States far less than it now spends in Afghanistan, the Obama administration itself will not be immune to pushback from skeptical US lawmakers, Katulis said.

In New York, the UN special envoy to Afghanistan, Jan Kubis, said a clear commitment was needed from countries at the Nato summit, “not words, not political pledges, not messages.” “If the countries will fail to support Afghanistan, (then) in five, 10 years from now … we might have a very nasty situation coming back,” he told Reuters. “We don’t want to have once again a restart of everything because it will be a lost investment … including lives lost in vain.”

The US official said funding goals were expected to be met eventually. “Everyone understands the stakes,” the official said. “It would be a serious mistake to abandon Afghanistan like it was abandoned in 1989. We have a responsibility to support (Afghan forces).”

About 3,000 foreign soldiers have died in Afghanistan since the war began after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

KARACHI: The Pakistani rupee ended almost flat at 90.73/93 to the dollar, compared with Thursday’s close of 90.86/91.The currency has been supported by remittances, which rose 20.2% to $10.88 billion in the first 10 months of the 2011/12 fiscal year, compared with $9.05 billion in the same period last year. In April, remittances totalled $1.14 billion. The rupee touched a record low of 91.28 to the dollar in January, dragged down by concerns over higher payments for oil imports and overall economic health. There is also concern about the current account deficit, which widened to a provisional $3.089 billion in the first nine months of current fiscal year. Overnight rates in the money market closed at 11.90%, the same level as on Thursday.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 19^th, 2012.

CHICAGO: The Obama administration may be not be able to strike a long-awaited agreement with Pakistan to help supply Western soldiers in Afghanistan as hoped in time for a major Nato summit in Chicago this weekend, a US official said.

“There’s a distinct possibility that we may not see an agreement before the end of this weekend,” the US official said on condition of anonymity. “But talks are progressing and we do expect to reach a deal in the near future.”

Earlier this week, as Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari accepted a last-minute Nato invitation to the May 20-21 summit, many US officials were optimistic they could finally make a deal to reopen key Nato ground routes into Afghanistan. Pakistan shut the routes in protest when US aircraft killed 24 Pakistani soldiers along the Afghan border in November.

Zardari’s appearance at the summit was seen as a potential breakthrough after the border deaths plunged perennially poor US-Pakistan ties into a deep freeze for months.

Now, as the two countries continue to disagree about details of a possible deal, that optimism appears to have faded.

Nato nations, grappling with severe fiscal pressure at home, are anxious to reach an agreement under which Pakistan would allow Nato trucks to once again travel on Pakistani roads, in part because shipping supplies into land-locked Afghanistan from the north is much more expensive.

Being able to transit across Pakistan becomes even more important as US commanders prepare for the monumental logistical task of withdrawing most of the 128,000 Nato soldiers in Afghanistan – and the equipment they have accumulated since 2001 – by the end of 2014.

Negotiations between US and Pakistani officials in Islamabad have dragged on.

From the beginning, Zardari’s government has demanded a high-level apology for the border deaths, which Nato said were accidental but which enraged Pakistanis.

The Obama administration, loathe to expose itself to further Republican criticism, has refused to apologise.

The US official said a “wide gulf” remained on the amount Nato nations would be charged for transporting equipment into Afghanistan, the central stumbling block in those talks.

Pakistan says its roads require millions of dollars in repairs after years of Nato trucks going back and forth on it. The amount that Pakistani officials believe should be charged is far higher than what US officials have offered.

“The fees proposed by the Pakistanis are unacceptable, not just to the United States but to our NATO allies,” the official said.

Lack of an agreement could add strains to interactions between President Barack Obama and other senior US officials and Pakistani leaders during the summit. US officials have long complained that Pakistan has failed to act sufficiently against militants fighting US troops in Afghanistan.

The White House said on Thursday that Obama had no plans for a one-on-one meeting with Zardari.

Still, Zardari’s government supports reopening the supply routes once a deal can be reached that satisfies both sides. For that reason the Obama administration expects to ultimately find an arrangement on the supply routes and on the precise amount of US military assistance Washington owes Pakistan.