Pre-sident Barack Obama stressed US support for Pakistan during a meeting with President Asif Ali Zardari on Friday and reiterated plans to visit Pakistan later this year, the White House said.
"The discussion focused on our shared efforts to fight terrorism and promote regional stability, specifically on the importance of cooperating toward a peaceful and stable outcome in Afghanistan," the White House said in a statement following the meeting in the Oval Office.
Bilateral ties have been strained in the last year by US frustration about militant sanctuaries in Pakistan, which feed violence aimed at US troops in neighbouring Afghanistan, and by complaints in Islamabad that US officials do not fully grasp political and social pressures Pakistani leaders face.
Zardari flew to Washington to attend a memorial service on Friday for Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, the veteran diplomat who was Obama's special representative for Pakistan and Afghanistan, where about 100,000 US soldiers are fighting a tenacious insurgency in the 10th year of an unpopular war.
Obama plans to start withdrawing some troops from Afghanistan in 2011, and other Nato nations are also looking to end their combat roles there. But a surge in violence in the last year has raised questions about whether foreign troops can establish lasting security in a country with widespread poverty and a weak, corruption-ridden government.
Husain Haqqani, the Pakistani ambassador in Washington, told reporters that the two leaders voiced concern about rising extremism world-wide that he said was behind the recent assassination of a Pakistani governor and this month's shooting rampage in the US state of Arizona that killed six people and critically wounded a member of Congress.
APP adds: President Asif Ali Zardari on Friday said Pakistan wanted to stand on its feet economically and not remain a permanent recipient of aid. "Both presidents acknowledged the services of the late ambassador Holbrooke and the great energy and strength that he had brought to the US-Pakistan relationship and agreed there was need to continue with that momentum to build the strategic partnership," Pakistan's ambassador to the United States Hussain Haqqani said in a post-meeting briefing. However, the ambassador said, President Obama made it clear that the meeting could not be a substitute for formal talks between the two anti-terror partners during an official visit to Washington by President Zardari later this year and President Obama's own visit to Islamabad.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, Deputy National Security Adviser Douglas Lute and White House counter terrorism advisor John Brennan assisted the US president while Pakistan's ambassador to the United States accompanied President Zardari for the meeting.
President Zardari, speaking about Pakistan's priorities and requirements, told his US counterpart that "Pakistan does not want to be a permanent recipient of aid. We want to be able to stand on our feet. And for that we need economic reforms and we are cognisant of that, and working on that and that Pakistan and the US are partners" in this respect, Haqqani said.
"For their part, President Obama and Secretary Clinton said over the next few days try to find ways to strengthen Pakistan's economic reform process while taking into consideration social and political factors as well as the overwhelming reality of the floods, which disrupted the economic growth last year," the Pakistani envoy said.
Emphasising the friendly ambience of the meeting and countering the usual media reporting of Pakistan-U.S. relations, Ambassador Haqqani noted "nobody scolded anybody, nobody raised the question of Pakistan not doing enough, and nobody said anything negative about the lack of support of either country for the other."
"We continue to work positively in all areas of co-operation, political, economic, diplomatic, strategic, intelligence and military," Haqqani said, underscoring the co-operative nature of ties.
Obama expressed his condolences over the assassination of Governor Punjab Selman Taseer. Obama appreciated Islamabad's resolve to build a "moderate democratic Pakistan which is the strongest guarantee against terrorist threat in our region," Haqqani told journalists. President Obama "unequivocally" stressed US support for democracy in Pakistan, the envoy added. "He (Obama) was very clear in asserting that the United States wants to help Pakistan in overcoming its difficulties and challenges and also recognises the successes that have been accomplished in fighting terrorism, building democracy and instituting economic reforms." The Oval office meeting between the Pakistani and U.S. president takes place just two days after Vice President Joe Biden met President Zardari and other top leaders in Islamabad on Wednesday, assuring of Washington's commitment to long-term relationship with Pakistan.