Just ahead, the Afghanistan-Pakistan Transit Trade Agreement becomes official on February 11.

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The flourishing transit trade through its ports has suffered from the general spending caution in the region, plus the steep rises in insurance rates.

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We also have helped to broker better relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan, and played a major role in bringing about the signing of something called the Transit Trade Agreement, which they had been trying to agree to since 1963.

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"We want to leave this behind us, and transit from rivals to trade partners, " said a senior Mexican government official.

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Transport lags can cause annual global exports to exceed imports when trade is growing rapidly because goods in transit in December are counted as exports by China, say, but are not counted as imports by America until January.

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Lebanon is one of a few countries not signatory to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), making it an easy transit point for wildlife smugglers, and it has few domestic animal-protection laws.

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Taleban Deputy Minister for Trade, Qari Faizan, met representatives of Pakistan's commerce ministry to discuss a 1965 transit agreement, which allows land routes into Afghanistan.

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