22 May 2004	Saturday	02 Rabi-us-Saani 1425

WASHINGTON, May 21: A change of government in US will not affect Islamabad's relations with Washington, Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri said on Friday.

After a series of meetings with opposition and government leaders in Washington, Mr Kasuri said he was confident that Pakistan "enjoyed a bipartisan support" in the US capital.

"Both Republican and Democratic parties realize that Pakistan is a key ally in a strategically important region and want to continue their relationship with Pakistan," he told a briefing in Washington after the meetings.

Besides key government leaders like Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Mr Kasuri also met senior Democratic lawmakers that included Nancy Pelosi, the leader of the Democratic Party in Congress. But the majority of the lawmakers he met on the Hill were from the ruling Republican Party and included senior members of the committees for foreign relations, armed forces and South Asian affairs.

Mr Kasuri said that most US politicians he met were aware of the fact that some US policies were not very popular in the Muslim world and "they also knew why these policies are disliked".

"They acknowledged that there are some problems in US policies towards the Muslim world, from Palestine to Indonesia," said Mr Kasuri. He said that Pakistan has always urged the US policy-makers to "take cognizance of the causes of terrorism" while planning to tackle terrorism.

"Everybody living under the Baathist or the Taliban government is not a Baathist or a Taliban supporter and the US policy-makers are now realizing this key fact," he said.

In Afghanistan, Mr Kasuri said, the Karzai government was already talking to former Taliban leaders like Wakil Ahmad Mutawakkil and members of the Hekmatyar group. "This is a welcome development and we have encouraged this process of negotiations."

Pakistan's relations with Afghanistan, he said, had improved greatly in the last two years, but he said it was wrong to question Afghanistan's relations with India. "Afghanistan is an independent country and makes its foreign policies according to its own requirements," he said.