US secretary of state Hillary Clinton said today both the United States and Pakistan needed to do more to battle Islamist militancy and that relations between the two allies had reached a turning point.
Ms Clinton's statement at a news conference in Islamabad came after a meeting with Pakistani leaders, as Washington pressed its ally to fully grasp the need to quash Islamist militancy amid tense ties over the killing of Osama bin Laden.
Ms Clinton and chairman of US Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen met President Asif Ali Zardari, Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani as well as Army chief General Ashfaq Kayani in the highest profile visit since a US Navy team killed the al-Qaeda leader.
"The US and Pakistan have worked together to kill or capture many of these terrorists on Pakistani soil," Ms Clinton told reporters.
The discovery of the al-Qaeda leader in a garrison town just 50km away from the capital, Islamabad, on May 2nd raised fresh doubts about Pakistan's reliability as a partner in the US-led war on militancy.
Ms Clinton repeated there was no evidence that anyone at the highest levels of the Pakistan government knew that bin Laden lived close to Islamabad.
She has emphasised the need to continue working closely with Pakistan, but her visit to Islamabad, kept secret for security reasons, came as US lawmakers questioned whether Pakistan should be receiving billions of dollars in aid.
The Pakistan government welcomed the death of bin Laden but was outraged and embarrassed by the secret raid in the town of Abbottabad, where bin Laden had lived for years, as a breach of its sovereignty.
It was the latest in a series of incidents, from US drone attacks inside Pakistan to the arrest of a CIA contractor for killing two Pakistanis, that have strained ties.
There has also been scant evidence of Islamist militancy abating despite billions of dollars in US aid.
Yesterday, a suicide car bomber killed 34 people outside a police station in the northwestern town of Hangu, and last weekend a group of militants stormed a heavily guarded naval base in the city of Karachi and fought a 16-hour battle with hundreds of soldiers.
Reuters