said. Al Jazeera's Kamal Hyder said that both NATO and Pakistani forces had taken into account losses in the past. "The losses, despite the fact that they have become a problem are nowhere near the levels that would cause alarm bells to ring" the correspondent said. According to his analysis it would cause a problem if "the Pakistani Taliban attack bridges or decide to take these people head on in the tribal areas" connecting Pakistan to the southern Afghan province of Kandahar. American officials said according to The New York Times that Hillary Clinton's increasingly cordial relationship with the young Pakistani foreign minister Hina Rabbani Khar paid dividends in resolving the dispute between both countries over the Salala incident. A final agreement on the wording of Clinton's statement of her conversation with Khar came after a week of marathon talks that included two trips to Islamabad by General John R. Allen, the US commander in Afghanistan, and a quickly arranged weekend trip by Thomas R. Nides, the deputy secretary of state for management and resources. In recent weeks Nides and Pakistani Finance Minister Abdul Hafeez Shaikh had spearheaded the negotiations to reopen the supply lines. After weeks of behind-the-scenes phone calls, e-mails and meetings between Nides and Abdul Hafeez Shaikh reached an agreement on the terms for the reopening of the NATO supply lines. Besides the US apology both sides agreed to the following: After initially demanding as much as $5,000 for each truck Pakistan dropped its insistence on a higher transit fee for each truck carrying NATO's nonlethal supplies from Pakistan into Afghanistan and agreed to keep the fee at the current rate of $250. The Obama Administration will ask Congress to reimburse Pakistan about $1.2 billion for costs incurred by 150,000 Pakistani troops carrying out counterinsurgency operations along the border with Afghanistan. "With the GLOCs open, we will look to pay past coalition support fund claims," Pentagon spokesman Captain John Kirby said, using a Pentagon acronym for the supply routes. The United States military reimburses by "coalition support funds" Pakistan for logistical, military and other support provided to American military operations against militants, but these payments have been suspended since Pakistan shut off the routes. More precisely the US halted paying the bills from Pakistan as tension rose between the two countries. The Pentagon will now consult with Congress about paying the bills prior to paying Pakistan in