US Secretary Rice arrives in Pakistan

Jun 27, 2006, 12:54 GMT

Islamabad - US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in Islamabad Tuesday for talks with Pakistani leaders on a range of bilateral, regional and international issues, officials said.

'This visit is a follow up to US President George W Bush's trip to Pakistan last March,' Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tasneem Aslam told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

Rice was to hold talks with her Pakistani counterpart Khurshid Mehmud Kasuri and meet President Pervez Musharraf to exchange views on bilateral, regional and international issues.

Aslam said the two sides would also review the 'wide ranging' cooperation between their countries in several areas.

Reports from the US said Rice would discuss bilateral and regional issues and express strong US support for Pakistan as a partner in many areas including the war on terror.

Rice's visit to Pakistan takes place against the backdrop of an ongoing war of words between Islamabad and Kabul, important allies of the US in the war on terrorism, on the issue of cross border infiltrations.

Afghan officials accuse Islamabad of not doing enough to check cross-border movements by remnants of the radical Taliban and al- Qaeda operatives.

Pakistan, which has already deployed over 80,000 troops on its borders with Afghanistan in the west, denies this.

Afghan foreign minister Rangeen Dadfar Spanta, who visited Pakistan last week, asked Islamabad to do more in the anti-terror war.

However, the two countries agreed to further strengthen bilateral mechanisms to remove misunderstandings between them on the cross- border infiltration and other issues.

Rice is scheduled to travel to Moscow after her Pakistan visit to attend a gathering of G8 foreign ministers, starting Thursday.