Bucharest: NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said today he wanted direct talks between his military alliance in Afghanistan and the new government in Pakistan.

With rows over troop numbers and deployments, and worries over the state of the porous Afghan-Pakistan border, Scheffer also dropped a broad hint he would soon head to Islamabad himself.

Speaking ahead of the formal opening of a NATO summit in the Romanian capital Bucharest, Scheffer pleaded for more contact between the 47,000 strong NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and the newly-elected government of Pakistan Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani.

"Military-to-military contacts are good. We must complement a military dialogue with a political one. NATO/ISAF need a political dialogue with Pakistan because instability there breeds instability in Afghanistan," he told foreign policy experts ahead of the summit opening dinner.

Scheffer, who is holding the ring during this three-day conference in a row over the NATO allies varying troop deployments across Afghanistan, added: "I look forward to going to Pakistan when the government in settled in.

"We have a common fight against terrorism, my starting point is, Pakistan is part of the solution, not part of the problem."

NATO's Afghanistan commitment has seen attention increasingly turn to neighbouring north-western Pakistan, from where the Taliban is directing its Afghan insurgency across the porous border.

Source : PTI