Pakistan gets $1.1b CSF from US

Fund designed to reimburse Pakistan for cost of counter-insurgency operations paid $8.8b between 2002 and 2011.

KARACHI: Pakistan said Thursday it had received $1.1 billion dollars from the United States in Coalition Support Funds for its fight against militants, the first installment of its kind since December 2010.

Washington released the funds after Pakistan and the United States on Tuesday signed an agreement governing Nato convoys travelling through Pakistan into Afghanistan until the end of 2015.

The fund, which is designed to reimburse Pakistan for the cost of counter-insurgency operations, paid $8.8 billion to Pakistan between 2002 and 2011.

But Islamabad stopped claiming the money as relations collapsed in the wake of the May 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

The crisis fell to a new low when US air strikes killed 24 Pakistani soldiers and Islamabad imposed a seven-month blockade on Nato traffic in protest.

"We received $1.118 billion from the coalition support fund last night," Syed Wasimuddin, spokesman for the central State Bank of Pakistan, told AFP.

He said it was the first installment since $633 million in December 2010.

Analysts have suggested that the $1.1 billion dollars is particularly beneficial to Pakistan as it tries to head off a new financial crisis created by poor tax revenues, mismanagement and overgenerous subsidies.

On Thursday, the US commander of Nato troops in Afghanistan held talks in Pakistan for the first time since the Nato supply lines resumed.

General John Allen later said that "significant progress" was being made in improving cooperation with Pakistan, which US officials have urged to do more to crush Afghan Taliban havens on its soil.