By IANS,
Islamabad : The US wants Pakistan to stop the production of ammonium nitrate as it is being used for making improvised explosive devices (IEDs), it was reported here.
The US special representative to Afghanistan-Pakistan Marc Grossman said Washington was now focusing on stopping the production of ammonium nitrate in Pakistan and hoped that a meeting in Islamabad this week would lead to its ban, Dawn reported.
Ammonium nitrate is a popular fertiliser that is also misused for making IEDs.
The US believes that about 85 percent of the IEDs in Afghanistan are made with ammonium nitrate brought from Pakistan.
Grossman told a convention of Pakistani physicians Saturday night that the IEDs had left thousands of Pakistanis dead.
“We hope that the July 5 meeting in Islamabad will deal with this problem once and for all,” he was quoted as saying.
Robert P. Casey, a member of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told the Pakistani physicians at the convention, in St Louis, Missouri, that they should use their influence to convince Islamabad to make a law banning ammonium nitrate.