Tuesday, July 11 2006 13:00 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Washington: The United States has asked Pakistan to resolve its differences with Kabul and work together along with America to curb terrorism in southern Afghanistan and help the war-torn nation realise its full economic potential.

The advice came from US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in a meeting Monday with visiting Pakistan Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmood Kasuri. The meeting primarily focused on how growing tension between Kabul and Islamabad is affecting the global war on terror.

Rice briefed Kasuri about her recent meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and told him that both Afghanistan and Pakistan have a shared interest in the stability and security as also economic prosperity of each other.

They also talked about Afghanistan's desire to build economic ties from Central Asia down through Afghanistan and Pakistan into India and about the importance of developing their economic infrastructure, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters.

Both Pakistan and Afghanistan understand that a part of realising the full potential of that economic integration is the common fight against terrorism, and US is doing everything it can to work together on trilateral basis to address their security concerns, he said.

"There are legitimate security issues in southern Afghanistan. The NATO forces and International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) are working to address them and the US hopes to enhance that partnership between Afghanistan and Pakistan in fighting what ultimately is a common destabilizing enemy," McCormack said.

Washington would also certainly encourage them, if they have any differences, to work them out and try to resolve them before they become a matter of public discussion, he said.

It was not clear if Kasuri raised the issue of an India-type nuclear deal in his meeting with Rice or National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, but Washington has time and again declined its demand on the ground that Pakistan and India are different countries with different needs and different histories as President George Bush put it.

Kasuri winds up his visit to Washington with a lecture on the war on terror, the Indian nuclear deal and US-Pakistani relations at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on Tuesday.