WASHINGTON, Feb 11: US President Barack Obama telephoned President Asif Ali Zardari on Wednesday, a day after his special envoy met the Pakistani leader with a message from his boss urging Pakistan to be a ‘stalwart ally’ in the fight against terrorism.

After the telephone call, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs issued a statement in Islamabad saying the two leaders agreed

on the need for a strategy to try and resolve the region’s problems.

“Both also agreed to start an active engagement for the resolution of problems facing our region through a holistic strategy,” the statement said. “They underscored a need for a joint strategy to bring peace and security to the region.”

President Zardari expressed the hope that the new US strategy would be “a beneficial change for the world,” particularly for the South Asian region and Pakistan-US relations, the statement said.

The Obama administration is working on a new strategy for Pakistan and Afghanistan, which focusses on fighting terrorists hiding in the tribal region and also promises to triple US economic assistance to Islamabad.

Mr Obama’s telephone call caused much speculation in Washington where analysts were trying to understand why President Obama had to call the Pakistani leader while he already had an envoy there.

President Obama said earlier this week that his envoy Richard Holbrooke was trying to encourage Pakistan to be “a stalwart ally” and “work in a regional fashion to root out those safe havens” in Fata.

India’s role

Observers in Washington say that if a regional approach leads to inviting India to join the hunt for militants in the tribal areas, it cannot be acceptable to Pakistan.

US officials have indicated that while they do not want to necessarily involve India in the tribal fight, they do believe that India has a role to play in bringing peace to Afghanistan.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, however, indicated earlier this week that the United States was finding it difficult to encourage greater cooperation between Pakistan and Afghanistan in fighting the militants along their border.

She also said that the Obama administration opted for a special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan because of “the bad blood” that prevented the two countries from working with each other.

Dr Khan’s release

At the State Department, spokesman Robert Wood did not discuss President Obama’s telephone call but underlined another issue that he said was being discussed between Islamabad and Washington: a court decision to release Dr A. Q. Khan.

“Ambassador Holbrooke certainly raised this issue” when he met Pakistani leaders in Islamabad, said the spokesman.

US Deputy Secretary of State Jim Steinberg had already discussed the release with Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi in Munich earlier this week.

“Mr Steinberg wanted to make sure that the Pakistanis understood how seriously we take this, and wanted assurances, and was given verbal assurances,” said Mr Wood. Now “we’ll just have to see how that plays out”.

He said Mr Steinberg wanted Pakistan to ensure that Dr Khan would not continue to be a proliferation threat.

“We were given those assurances. We’ll have to see how things go. We certainly don’t want to see that black market up and operating,” said the State Department spokesman. “We’ll continue to follow the issue very closely.”

Mr Wood rejected the media speculation that Pakistan was secretly trying to arrange a meeting between Ambassador Holbrooke and some Taliban leaders and that President Obama’s call might also be linked to those efforts.

“I haven’t heard that at all, not at all. I don’t believe that to be the case at all,” said Mr Wood.

The State Department official also insisted that he saw no link between Wednesday’s terrorist attacks in Afghanistan and Ambassador Holbrooke’s visit to Kabul.

“I have no reason to be able to draw that kind of a conclusion,” he said.