ISLAMABAD, Aug 16: US Secretary of State Colin Powell offered regrets to President Pervez Musharraf over the death of two Pakistani soldiers who were killed in US troops firing on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, the foreign ministry said on Saturday.

A ministry statement said the regrets were expressed in a telephone conversation on Friday night in what seemed to be the highest-level contact between the two sides a day after the president had called Monday’s incident in the North Waziristan agency as “unacceptable” and demanded an inquiry to fix responsibility.

Mr Powell, according to the ministry statement, informed the president that an inquiry was being conducted to ascertain details of the incident, which officials from both sides had previously described as a case of mistaken identity in an area where US and Pakistani troops were hunting militants of former Taliban regime and Al Qaeda network.

“During the telephone conversation, the US secretary of state expressed his regrets over the incident of August 11 in which two Pakistani soldiers had died due to firing of US forces on Pakistan-Afghanistan border in the North Waziristan Agency,” the statement said.

It quoted Mr Powell as saying the United States attached “great importance to its relations with Pakistan” as an “important ally in the global fight against terrorism”.

President Musharraf expressed the hope that “all necessary steps would be taken to prevent and preempt recurrence of such incidents in future,” the statement said.

The president had earlier raised the issue in a meeting with US Ambassador Nancy Powell in Islamabad on Thursday when a foreign ministry statement quoted him as saying that “the incident was unacceptable” and calling for an immediate inquiry and initiating action against those found responsible for the shooting.

Pakistan had already protested to the US military about the incident, which took place at a newly established border post in the area.

The two Pakistan army jawans were killed and a junior officer of a paramilitary force was wounded when they came under American fire while patrolling the Lawara picket west of Miranshah, the headquarters of the North Waziristan agency in the south of the tribal belt.

Officials from both sides said the American forces on the Afghan side of the border mistook the Pakistani troops as Taliban or Al Qaeda men.

A meeting of Pakistani, US and Afghan military officials held on Tuesday at Bagram airbase agreed to establish a three-way hotline in a move to coordinate military movement in the area.

The August 11 incident occurred when there was already tension on the Pakistan-Afghan border due to clashes between the border guards of the two sides along the Mohmand tribal agency in the north-western tribal area.