ISLAMABAD, March 4: US President George W. Bush wrapped up his maiden South Asian visit on Saturday, clutching a landmark nuclear deal with India and assurances from Pakistan that it will not waver in the ‘war on terror’.

Mr Bush launched his trip under extraordinary security on Wednesday with a surprise stopover in Afghanistan, his first since the United States-led coalition overthrew the Taliban regime in 2,001.

The centrepiece of his five-day trip was the clinching of a landmark civilian nuclear deal with India that aims to firm up the strategic partnership between the world’s most powerful and most populous democracies.

But the ‘war on terror’ kept haunting during the regional swing.

On Thursday, when he was meeting with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi, an American diplomat and a US consulate employee were killed by a suicide bomber in the Pakistani city of Karachi.

A day later, while Mr Bush travelled to the Indian city of Hyderabad, posters of terror mastermind Osama bin Laden were held up by demonstrators opposed to US foreign policies.

Counterterrorism was a common theme in Mr Bush’s talks with Mr Singh, Pakistani military ruler General Pervez Musharraf and Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

By working with these leaders and their peoples, ‘we’re seizing the opportunities this new century offers and helping to lay the foundations of peace and prosperity for generations to come,” Mr Bush told Americans in a radio address from here before his return home on Saturday.

Illustrating the terrorism concerns, Mr Bush arrived in Islamabad late on Friday under cover of darkness, with the window blinds of his Air Force One pulled down and the lights off to conceal its presence. He was then taken by a helicopter and billeted at the heavily fortified US embassy.

Bin Laden and his key lieutenants are believed (by some) to have sought refuge in rugged mountainous tribal areas along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan. Taliban commanders are also reportedly taking sanctuary in Pakistan.

“There’s a lot of work to be done in defeating Al-Qaeda,” Mr Bush told journalists after talks with President Musharraf but added that the Pakistani leader understood the high stakes involved in the battle.

“Part of my mission today was to determine whether or not the president is as committed as he has been in the past to bringing these terrorists to justice, and he is,” Mr Bush said, with President Musharraf by his side.

In New Delhi, Mr Bush clinched a deal with Mr Singh in which India agreed to place its civilian atomic reactors under global scrutiny for the first time in more than three decades in return for foreign nuclear technology.—AFP