WASHINGTON, Feb 4: It is in America’s interest, and that of the international community, to ensure that Pakistan remains a strong, unified state, says US Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte.

In an interview to the Council on Foreign Relations, published on Monday, Mr Negroponte also emphasised the need for working with Pakistan to defeat extremists operating out of the tribal region.

Asked to comment on a recent opinion piece in the New York Times which predicted that Pakistan might disintegrate, leaving the US to deal with a nuclear-armed rump Punjab state, Mr Negroponte noted that Pakistan is already the production of partition from another country, India.

“I think it probably is in our interests and the interests of the international community and of Pakistan itself to remain a strong unified state,” said the number two official at the US State Department.

“The important thing is that they do have a strong central government that’s able, and strong security institutions that are able to stabilise the situation throughout the country.”

Mr Negroponte said he will not like to comment on the assumption that Pakistan and US forces worked together to kill a top Al Qaeda operative in North Waziristan last week.

“If this is true — that this high-level Al Qaeda operative has been put out of commission — that’s probably an important development and degrades Al Qaeda’s capabilities,” he said.

Mr Negroponte said the United States was still concerned that the border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan “remains an area where there are a lot of Al Qaeda operatives.”

Their presence, he said, has an impact on the security situation in Afghanistan and has contributed to a surge of extremist activities inside Pakistan.

“So this is a serious problem. We fundamentally share a similar assessment of the situation with the government of Pakistan, and we work this issue very hard with them.”

The United States, he said, was also supporting Pakistan’s efforts to try and improve the economic situation in the tribal areas.

“We have military cooperation programmes, military equipment programmes, and obviously the issue of the war on terror is something on which we consult with them on a frequent basis.”