CHICAGO — President Obama was struggling to manage key shifts in the relationships with his two South Asia counterparts on Sunday, as a deal to reopen supply lines through Pakistan to Afghanistan appeared stalled just as Mr. Obama began talks on ending the NATO alliance’s combat role in the Afghan war.

Mr. Obama remained at loggerheads with President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan, refusing to even meet one-on-one with him even though Mr. Zardari flew to the NATO summit meeting in Chicago ostensibly to finalize the supply line agreement.

In contrast, Mr. Obama and President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, whose relationship has been at turns awkward or tense over the past four years, huddled on Sunday morning to discuss how to make progress together in reconciliation talks with the Taliban.

It was a measure of just how bad things have gotten between the United States and Pakistan that, by contrast, Mr. Obama’s relationship with Mr. Karzai — which has been rocky every since Mr. Obama came into office vowing to end what he viewed as former President George W. Bush’s coddling of the mercurial Afghan leader — actually seemed relatively stable on Sunday.

The two men, fresh off Mr. Obama’s unannounced trip to Kabul this month to sign a strategic partnership agreement, have been presenting a more unified front than in times past, when Mr. Karzai has berated American troops, threatened to join the Taliban and chastised the American-led NATO mission that is set to end in 2014.

“I want to express my appreciation for the hard work that President Karzai has done,” Mr. Obama said after their meeting, standing next to him. “He recognizes the enormous sacrifices American troops have made.”

Mr. Obama quickly added: “We recognize the hardships that Afghans have been through many years of war.”

Mr. Karzai, for his part, said he would work to make sure that Afghanistan is not a “burden on the shoulders of our friends” in the international community.

“Things are definitely easing right now,” one Obama administration official said. The official credited the strategic partnership agreement, which sets out the terms for a lasting relationship between the countries after 2014, and which he said had given Mr. Karzai a level of reassurance that the United States and NATO would not abandon Afghanistan once combat troops leave the country.

On the Pakistani front, however, things were less relaxed.

American and Pakistani officials had expressed optimism last week that an agreement on re-establishing supply routes was imminent. Negotiators were narrowing their differences after three weeks of intense deliberations, they said, and it was hoped that an invitation for Pakistan to attend the summit would engender the good will needed to close the gap between the two sides.

The invitation was accepted, and Mr. Zardari arrived in Chicago on Saturday. But a deal on the supply lines remained elusive, and Mr. Obama would not meet directly with Mr. Zardari without it, American officials said.

The supply lines, through which about 40 percent of NATO’s nonlethal supplies had passed, were closed last November after 24 Pakistani soldiers were killed in American airstrikes along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The deaths capped a year of crises between the United States and Pakistan that put immense strain on the two countries’ already fragile relationship.

The failure to strike a deal on the supply routes ahead of the summit injects new tension into the relationship. “When NATO extended the invitation, we thought it would move the Pakistanis off the dime,” a senior American official said.

Without the deal, “it’s going to be really uncomfortable” for Mr. Zardari at the summit, the official said, who requested anonymity to speak candidly about the talks.

American officials said the main sticking point was the amount NATO would pay for each truck carrying supplies from Karachi, on Pakistan’s Arabian Sea cost, to the Afghan border. Before the closure, the cost per truck was about $250. Pakistan is now asking for “upward of $5,000,” another American official said.

Pakistan was also seeking an indemnity waiver in case American cargo was damaged, as well as more money to repair road damage caused by the heavy trucks traveling over Pakistani highways.

“We’re not anticipating necessarily closing out those negotiations this weekend,” said Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser, on Saturday evening during a briefing with reporters aboard en route to Chicago.

Mr. Rhodes said the White House believes a deal will eventually be reached, but declined to say when it could be expected.

“It’s our sense that both sides want to get it done, it will get done,” he said. “But right now, we’re in a process of negotiation about how exactly that’s going to happen.”

Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, Sherry Rehman, expressed similar sentiments in an interview with CNN on Friday, saying “there has been some movement forward.”

Ms. Rehman also said it was a sign of “good tidings” that Pakistan had allowed a few trucks to carry supplies to the American embassy in Kabul late last week.

But the senior American official said on Saturday that if a few trucks were allowed through in an effort to show good faith for a broader deal, it “did not pass the laugh test.” Instead, it only further exasperated American officials who had believed they were on the brink of breaking the six-month impasse, the official said.

The coalition does not need the supply lines “to be open to support the campaign. But they’re helpful to us in sending home our equipment,” Marine Gen. John R. Allen was quoted as saying in an interview Sunday with Reuters. “We don’t want an agreement fast, we want an agreement that’s right. So we’re going to take the time to get it right.”

SAN FRANCISCO May 20 (Reuters) – One day after Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg saw through the landmark initial public offering of his company, he chalked up a personal landmark by marrying his long-time girlfriend, Priscilla Chan, on Saturday.

The couple wed Saturday in the backyard of their modest home in Palo Alto, California, with fewer than 100 people in attendance, a spokesperson authorized to speak on behalf of the couple said.

Guests arrived believing they were attending a graduation party for Chan, who graduated from medical school at the University of California, San Francisco, on May 14. Upon arriving, they learned they were actually attending a wedding, the spokesperson said.

The guests, limited to the couple’s family and close friends, ate a meal catered by Palo Alto restaurants Palo Alto Sole and Fuki Sushi. They capped off the meal with sweets the couple had eaten on their first date: Burdick chocolate mice.

Zuckerberg gave his bride a simple ruby ring he had designed himself, the spokesman said. He ditched his traditional sweatshirt “hoodie” for a jacket and tie, while Chan wore a lace-topped sleeveless dress and a veil over swept-back hair.

Chan and Zuckerberg started planning the event four to five months ago, the spokesman said.

The couple met as undergraduates at Harvard in 2004. While Zuckerberg famously dropped out to work on Facebook, Chan, a pediatrician, stayed to earn her undergraduate degree in 2007.

They both changed their status to “married” on their Facebook pages.

ROME — Hundreds of Italians were spending Sunday night in tents and temporary shelters after an earthquake early in the day struck in the north of their country, killing at least four people, injuring dozens and sending parts of historic castles, clock towers and churches tumbling down.

Italian authorities said the earthquake in the area of Modena and Ferrara in the Emilia Romagna region registered a 6.0 magnitude. At least one tremor was felt by residents around 1 a.m., but the fatal quake hit shortly after 4 a.m.

Four men working the night shift in factories in the Ferrara area were killed, two of them when the roof of a ceramics factory caved in. In addition, Italian news reports cited the quake in the deaths of two women apparently due to heart attacks.

The quake left hundreds of people homeless. Some were expected to seek shelter in tents set up by the Civil Protection Agency, others in sports arenas and others in homes of relatives and neighbors. Rain in the area made the situation all the more difficult.

Alessandro Amato, an earthquake expert at the Rome-based National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology, told Sky Italia television that the epicenter was in the Padania plains, an area that had not been noted as a potentially dangerous spot on the quake-prone Italian peninsula.

Dozens of aftershocks followed, the most severe at magnitude 5.1, according to news reports.

The magnitude of Sunday’s quake was less than that of the April 2009 tremor that measured 6.3 and devastated the Italian city of L’Aquila and killed more than 300 people. Amato said that differences in the fault lines under the two areas also contributed to the fact that Sunday’s quake caused much less destruction.

The Rome daily La Repubblica reported that a 5-year-old girl in Finale Emilia was pulled from her collapsed home thanks to the quick thinking of a woman who, not being able to reach local rescue squads because of interrupted communications, called her doctor in New York who in turn was able to notify Italian authorities.

Damage to buildings was significant, especially in the towns of Sant’Agostino di Ferrara, where the exterior wall of the town hall was ripped apart, and San Felice sul Panaro, where a 14th century fortified castle lost parapets and watchtowers.

In the town of Finale Emilia the towers of the 14th century Castello delle Rocche lay in rubble and an emblematic clock tower was shorn in half vertically, leaving only the Roman numerals VII, VIII, IX, X and XI on the clock’s face.

Many farmhouses, barns and agricultural storage facilities were also damaged in surrounding rural zones.

Officials from the culture ministry said that in the coming days and weeks experts would assess the damage to the many artistic and architectural treasures that are found in this area with a particularly intense cultural history.

In his regular Sunday greeting in St. Peter’s Square, Pope Benedict XVI said that he was “spiritually close to those affected by this calamity.”

ALSO:

Lockerbie bomber Megrahi dies in Libya

U.S. officials frustrated as Pakistan still blocking supply routes

Obama and Karzai meet, cite NATO commitment to Afghanistan

– Sarah Delaney

Photo: The damaged medieval clock tower of Finale Emilia, Italy on Sunday, following the magnitude 6.0 earthquake that shook northern Italy early in the day. Credit: Gianfilippo Oggioni, Lapresse / Associated Press.

Newark Mayor Cory Booker defended Mitt Romney for his work at Bain Capital today, criticizing the Obama campaign’s attack ad against Romney and calling for an end to “nauseating” attacks from both sides, reports Politico.

Booker, a Democrat and a surrogate for the Obama campaign, was on NBC’s “Meet the Press” today where he weighed in on topics ranging from the Obama and Romney campaigns to whether Gov. Chris Christie is presidential material.

Booker slammed the criticisms on Romney’s private equity background and likened them to attacks by some on the right to inject Rev. Jeremiah Wright into the campaign.

“Enough is enough. Stop attacking private equity. Stop attacking Jeremiah Wright,” Booker said on the show.

“Meet the Press” host David Gregory even gave a nod to the Booker and Christie parody video that made the rounds last week and spoofed the mayor’s heroics and Christie’s vice presidential potential.

On Romney’s work at Bain Capital, Booker said: ““As far as that stuff, I have to just say from a very personal level I’m not about to sit here and indict private equity…To me, it’s just we’re getting to a ridiculous point in America. Especially that I know I live in a state where pension funds, unions and other people invest in companies like Bain Capital. If you look at the totality of Bain Capital’s record, they’ve done a lot to support businesses [and] to grow businesses. And this, to me, I’m very uncomfortable with.”

Later Booker posted on Twitter clarifying his earlier statements: “So I’ll clarify my comments on MTP. Yes, Obama must be re-elected. But we as a Nation owe it to him & ourselves 2 reject politics as usual.”

(See the video around 3:40 for Booker’s comments.)

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Booker was part of a roundtable discussion, hosted by Gregory this morning on “Meet the Press,” alongside Republican strategist Mike Murphy, Jim Cramer from CNBC’s “Mad Money” and Kim Strassel of the Wall Street Journal.

On Christie, Booker artfully dodged a direct question from Gregory on the governor’s potential national ambitions and qualifications.

“Is he qualified to be president?” he asked Booker of Christie in an earlier segment of the roundtable.

“I’ll say this, he’s as qualified — if not more — than all the other names I’m hearing being mentioned,” Booker said.

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Tropical Storm Alberto hovered off the South Carolina and Georgia coasts on Sunday, canceling tourist cruises, producing showers along the coast and serving as a reminder that the 2012 Atlantic hurricane season is just around the corner.

The first storm of the season that officially begins June 1 was not expected to approach landfall on the Carolinas’ coast, but it had prompted a tropical storm watch and forecasters warned that it could produce high winds, heavy surf, rip currents and scattered rain across the region.

“It’s making the closest approach to the coastline now, so the impacts shouldn’t be much different than what we are already seeing,” said Jonathan Lamb, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Charleston, S.C.

At 5 p.m. Eastern, the National Hurricane Center said Alberto was about 130 miles (210 km) south of Charleston. It has maximum sustained winds of 45 mph (72 kph).

It’s currently moving southwest at 6 mph (10 kph), but forecasters expect it to turn northeast sometime Monday.

A tropical storm watch that was in effect for the South Carolina coast from the Savannah River to the South Santee River was dropped Sunday afternoon without tropical storm conditions reaching the coast.

A few rain bands from Alberto reached Hilton Head Island and moved south to near Jacksonville, Fla., on Sunday but they moved through in less than an hour. Winds weren’t expected to reach higher than 30 mph at the beaches, Lamb said. From Charleston to the north, even less of an impact was expected.

The hurricane center said the storm was expected to slow down through Sunday, then begin turning northeast and heading farther out to sea sometime Monday.

Alberto was named a tropical storm Saturday upon forming in the Atlantic. It was the third tropical storm to form before the official June 1 start of the hurricane season in the past 31 years.

Forecasters said there is no evidence that early-forming storms mean more tropical storms and hurricane for the rest of the season, especially with storms like Alberto that form from leftover weather fronts and low pressure systems moving off the mainland into the Atlantic.

“It’s anomalous for sure, but there’s really no indication this gives us any idea what the hurricane season is going to be like as a whole,” Lamb said.

The brief bursts of wet weather and occasional gusty winds disrupted some vacation plans along the beaches of southern South Carolina and Georgia. Swimmers were warned of dangerous rip currents, although no rescues were reported. Boat operators canceled cruises both for the choppy seas and because concerned vacationers didn’t want to go out with Alberto offshore.

“A lot of people are nervous about the weather, so we are getting cancelations,” said Kate Myers, with Island Explorer Tours on Hilton Head.

The brief storms ended by Sunday morning and the sun was occasionally peeking through, so the captain that runs the afternoon cruise through the salt marshes hoped to take tourists on his scheduled run, Myers said.

“Having a storm out there this early is just strange,” Myers said. “But it has been a weird year for weather.”

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Online:

National Hurricane Center: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/