Pak likely to allow US military trainers: US TV

WASHINGTON: US military trainers will be invited back into Pakistan "as early as April or May," but Pakistan has ruled out allowing CIA drones back into the country, US media reported.

Relations between the two nations have been at an all-time low since 24 Pakistani soldiers were killed in an inadvertent aerial attack by Nato in November.

The parliament is reviewing the nature of its relationship with the US, and politicians are expected on January 30 to deliver a list of conditions for cooperation to resume.

The stipulations will include no covert CIA or military operations on the ground in Pakistan, and no unauthorized incursions into its airspace. Drones, which are the CIA's biggest weapon against militants hiding in the tribal belt dividing Afghanistan and Pakistan, "can never return," a senior Pakistani official told the US channel.

"They will never be allowed back, at Shamsi or anywhere else," the official added.

In return, Pakistan would allow back US military trainers, including special forces teams, and a resumption of close cooperation with the CIA in targeting militants.

It would also reopen the Torkham and Chaman border crossings into Afghanistan, which have been closed to NATO supply convoys since the attack.

Progress can be rapid once the conditions would be presented to the America.

Islamabad also would reopen its doors to high-level US diplomats after an embarrassing snub this week to President Obama's special envoy to the region, Marc Grossman, who was denied his request to visit Pakistan in the middle of his tour of South Asia.

Pakistan wants working conditions with Washington that provide "respect for the nation, its sovereignty - both its soil and airspace - and equal terms of cooperation."