WASHINGTON, Feb 28: The United States believed that Pakistan would have a democratically-elected government in the next two weeks, US Secretary of State John Negroponte told a congressional panel on Thursday.

“I spoke with (US) Ambassador (Anne W.) Patterson this morning and she predicted that the new government will be formed within the next couple of weeks, perhaps sooner,” the second-ranking US diplomat told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

“We cannot tell the precise colouration or individuals” who will be included in this government but “we hope that they will be inclined towards moderation,” said Mr Negroponte. “We hope we will be able to work with them as well as, if not better than, we have worked with those in the past.”

The United States, he said, would offer to help the new government fight extremists and hoped that they would accept the offer.

Senator Richard Lugar, who was recently in Pakistan to monitor the elections along with Senators John Kerry and Joseph Biden, told Mr Negroponte that the Pakistani media were expressing concerns over the delay in calling the new parliament and asked him to say when he thought the first session of the new assembly would be held.

The State Department official noted that the election results needed to be certified before the parliament met but repeated his earlier assurance that Islamabad would have a new government in the next two weeks. The United States, he said, hoped that the political process would go forward in a way that the current situation could not be exploited by the enemies of democracy, including terrorists.

For the first time since the Feb 18 elections, Mr Negroponte also signalled the Bush administration’s desire to distance itself from President Pervez Musharraf. “We look forward to working with the new government in every way possible,” said the senior US diplomat when a senator told him that the media in Pakistan still believed that Washington was supporting President Musharraf.

Mr Negroponte said that Pakistan, and not President Musharraf, was “indispensable” to the fight against terror.

Pakistan, he said, was important not only as an ally in the war against terror but also in its own right and the United States needed to make other friendly nations aware of Pakistan’s importance.

“We also need in our dialogue to draw their attention to the importance of Pakistan, in addition to whatever help they are giving to Afghanistan and Iraq,” he said.

Senator Kerry reminded Mr Negroponte that Pakistan’s newly elected leaders wanted to engage militant leaders like Baitullah Mehsud. Calling it “a recipe for disaster,” Mr Kerry asked Mr Negroponte how Washington would respond to such a dialogue.

“Whatever might be said, there is no sympathy for militant extremism,” said Mr Negroponte. “I believe that political actors in Pakistan want to deal with them, and not give them a freeway.”