'Supply routes through Pakistan to be reopened soon'

Pakistan will soon reopen the ground lines of communication to Afghanistan, which were shut down last November following the death of 24 soldiers in a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation's strike, the White House has said.

"We continue to work with Pakistan on this issue. We did not anticipate that the supply line issue was going to be resolved prior to the summit. And our teams continue to meet and we are making diligent progress," said White House Press Secretary Jay Carney.

He said the US expects this issue to be resolved.

"We have said that, the government of Pakistan has said that and we expect it to happen," Carney said when asked if non-opening of the supply routes during the just concluded NATO Summit in Chicago was a failure of President Barack Obama.

"The fact is Pakistan says it wants to resolve this; we obviously are interested in resolving it; it will be resolved, we are confident. We didn't anticipate it would be resolved prior to the summit. We are continuing to work towards its resolution," Carney said.

"How could he be disappointed by -- you are basically setting up a straw man that says it wasn't resolved before the summit. I just told you we didn't expect it to be resolved before or during the summit," he said.

"He (Obama) met briefly with President Zardari. There was no expectation for it to be resolved during the summit. This is being worked on diligently by representatives of both governments and we expect them to be resolved," Carney said.