WASHINGTON, Oct 25: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said that parliamentary elections in Pakistan can be held in December.

She said that the United States was encouraging President Gen Pervez Musharraf to work more closely with Benazir Bhutto and other moderate political leaders.

“We hope that there will be an effort of all moderates to be prepared for fully democratic elections to take place in the parliament in December, so that Pakistan can take that next step toward a more stable democratic environment,” Ms Rice told a congressional hearing in Washington.

In another statement, Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte said the United States was transforming its relations with both Pakistan and India while maintaining close ties with each.

“We are also transforming our relations with both India and Pakistan. We have good relations with each country and we are tackling challenges in the region and beyond,” he said.

Speaking at a conservative Washington think-tank, the American Enterprise Institute, he said the United States has made noteworthy progress in the region over the past several years, in particular, by decreasing the risks of conflict within Asia.

Mr Negroponte referred to the Kashmir dispute and recalled that the United States “worked to prevent war between India and Pakistan in 2001, and we have helped to reduce tensions in the years that followed.”

The United States, he said, wants to work with its allies in South Asia to help them resolve the problems they face. At a separate briefing, State Department’s spokesman Sean McCormack described Pakistan and President Gen Pervez Musharraf as good allies in the war on terror and expressed Washington’s desire to continue to work with Islamabad to fight extremist forces in the region.

“President Musharraf and the Pakistani government over the past five years have been good allies in the war on terror,” he said. “They have worked closely with us to set Pakistan on a different course.”

He dispelled the impression that the United States persuaded Gen Musharraf to join the war against terror. “President Musharraf has decided that himself and we’ve tried to be supportive of that.” The Pakistani government, on its own, launched numerous operations inside Pakistan to try to disrupt terrorist attacks as well as break up terrorist cells, the US official said.

Pakistan, he said, faced the issue of Taliban and Al Qaeda sympathisers hiding in the tribal region and it was “very much aware” that it’s a problem for them and they have to deal with. “We’ve seen the kind of violence that potentially can emanate from those regions and it is directed at us, it’s directed at the Afghan populations. It’s directed at Pakistani populations,” Mr McCormack said.

He acknowledged that so far Pakistan has not been able to close down the Taliban and Al Qaeda networks in the tribal areas. “That’s going to require a concerted effort. And we’re going to continue to work with the Pakistani government to see that there is not a safe haven from which those terrorist groups and terrorists can operate,” the US official said.