WASHINGTON, April 17: The US attitude towards air strikes inside Pakistan’s tribal belt and on talks with militants hiding in the area appears to have softened, but so far Washington has made no promise to halt the attacks, diplomatic and US official sources say.

Assistant Secretary Richard Boucher, who looks after South Asian affairs at the State Department, said that a US delegation which visited Islamabad earlier this month discussed both the issues with Pakistan’s new rulers.

“We talked about it in Pakistan,” Mr Boucher told Dawn when asked to explain the US policy on air strikes on suspected terrorist targets inside the tribal zone. “We are both committed to ensure that terrorist threats are eliminated.”

The United States, he said, also recognised that there were “reconcilable” elements inside the tribal zone and it did not oppose talking to them for seeking a peaceful end to the conflict.

Mr Boucher and Deputy Secretary John Negroponte were the first foreign visitors to meet Islamabad’s new rulers for talks focusing on Pakistan’s role in the war against terror.

Asked if Washington would continue its policy of attacking suspected targets whenever they had “actionable intelligence,” Mr Boucher said since the United States and Pakistan were partners in the war against terror, they consulted each other before taking any action.

In January senior US intelligence officials flew to Islamabad and struck a deal with President Pervez Musharraf to give the American military a freer hand in the use of unmanned Predators aircraft against targets in Fata. The subsequent increase in air strikes caused outrage in Pakistan.

On Thursday, Britain’s Guardian newspaper published a report claiming that the United States had promised to cut down air strikes and also to consult Pakistan before future strikes on Pakistani soil.

The report quoted officials in Islamabad as saying that they also had won American support for their policy of opening a dialogue with tribal chiefs, led by the Awami National Party.

“The new understanding on air strikes by US Predator drones is seen in Islamabad as a critical benchmark for the new relationship,” the report noted.

Pakistani officials told the newspaper that Washington had agreed to hold close consultations with the civilian government, not with President Musharraf, before any future strikes.