US President George W. Bush will seek to ease tensions between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf today amid a Taliban resurgence that is pressuring all three governments.
After holding separate meetings with each leader in recent days, Bush sits down with Mr Karzai and Gen Musharraf in the evening for a working White House dinner.
Mr Karzai and Gen Musharraf have been trading barbs over the past week, both raising questions about the way the other is handling the Taliban along the remote region spanning their countries' border.
For Mr Bush, the resurgent Taliban has become an issue in the congressional elections in November because Democrats claim Mr Bush short-changed Afghanistan in order to pour troops and money into the Iraq war.
The Taliban's intensified campaign against the Afghan government and foreign troops supporting it this year has spawned the worst violence since they were ousted after the September 11th attacks in 2001.
US and Nato troops are up against a much more intense insurgency than expected and Nato has called for more troops from member nations.
Gen Musharraf and Mr Karzai have been at odds over Afghan accusations the Taliban are operating from Pakistan.
At a news conference with Mr Karzai yesterday, Mr Bush said he did not believe any tensions would dampen the effort to find al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
But he said, half in jest, that he wanted to see the body language between the two leaders "to determine how tense things are."
"I'll be good," Mr Karzai replied with a smile.
Gen Musharraf, using a US visit in part to promote his memoir, said yesterday he believed Mr Karzai was aware of the political environment in his country. "He is not oblivious. He knows everything. But he is purposely denying, turning a blind eye like an ostrich. He doesn't want to tell the world what is the fact for his own personal reasons," he told CNN.
Mr Karzai has complained that Taliban fighters carrying out armed attacks inside his country are being sheltered on the Pakistani side of the rugged border.