WASHINGTON, Sept 29: Pakistan and Afghanistan have agreed to maintain regular contact over the issues that caused verbal spats between their leaders during their two-week stay in the United States, the White House has said.

Spokesman Tony Snow indicated that at a White House dinner on Wednesday President Pervez Musharraf and his counterpart Hamid Karzai agreed to avoid verbal attacks against each other.

The two leaders had been sniping at each other from long distance for months, forcing US President George W. Bush to dispatch his Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Kabul and Islamabad last June to try to ease tensions.

Although a wily negotiator, Ms Rice apparently failed to bridge the differences. Tensions increased as Afghanistan became increasingly unstable and crisis-ridden. The verbal exchanges increased after the two leaders arrived in the US earlier this month for attending the UN General Assembly and a series of meetings with Mr Bush.

Asked to comment on Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri’s statement that the objective in the meeting was to achieve some sort of a verbal ceasefire, Mr Snow said: “The two have agreed to be in regular contact. I’m not going to disclose what they’ve said, but I will also not contradict the foreign minister.”

Pakistan’s Ambassador here Mahmud Ali Durrani told Dawn that the two sides had agreed to “tone down the rhetoric” against each other.

The White House spokesman said President Bush was happy with the meeting “because there were constructive efforts made … constructive efforts agreed upon to work together to fight the war on terror and also to address … the root causes.”

Mr Snow said the measures agreed in the meeting would help “develop civil society” in the two countries, such as construction of “roads, schools, infrastructure (and) economic development.”

He said the two leaders agreed to address the causes that had lead to the grievances that terrorists exploited when they were trying to recruit members, especially the Taliban.

The spokesman rejected as inaccurate media reports that President Musharraf and President Karzai did not shake hands or exchange greetings at the dinner.

“There were handshakes in advance,” he said. “You had the two presidents in the Roosevelt Room together before going into the Oval, warm handshakes extended all around, some preliminary chatting and joking before they went out to the Rose Garden, and then off they went to dinner.”

The White House press secretary recalled that President Bush had said he would watch the body language of the Pakistani and Afghan leaders at the dinner to assess how tense their relations were.

“And what you had were both of them having a very candid exchange about their concerns,” he said.

At a briefing at the State Department, spokesman Sean McCormack said the United States, Afghan and Pakistani leaders did talk about “how to better achieve” the goal of defeating terrorism and extremism. “It is in the interest of those countries and all the peoples of those countries to do everything that we possibly can to address those threats,” he said.

“We would just emphasise and underline the importance of all of the three of us working together to address what is a common threat, a threat to all of us.”

Mr McCormack said the US was aware of the ‘historical differences’ between Pakistan and Afghanistan and of “any tensions that may have built up over time.”

The US, however, was encouraging both the countries to look beyond those differences and to work together to address what was a common threat. “And we are hopeful that if everybody can keep his eye on that goal, then we will make some progress,” he said.