WASHINGTON, June 14: As Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani urged US leaders to give political space to his government, the outgoing US defence secretary also advised Washington to show patience while dealing with Pakistan.

In a related development, the US State Department welcomed a transit trade agreement between Pakistan and Afghanistan and, without naming India, it encouraged similar cooperation among other nations in South Asia.

“We need each other, and this relationship goes beyond Afghanistan,” Defence Secretary Robert Gates told the AP news agency. “It has to do with regional stability, and I think we have to be realistic about Pakistani distrust … and their deep belief that when we’re done with Al Qaeda that we’ll be gone, again.”

After talks with a State Department delegation in Islamabad on Monday, Prime Minister Gilani asked the US to focus on socio-economic development in the militancy-affected areas and provide political space to the democratic government of Pakistan.

“US relations with Pakistan are critically important for peace in the region as well as imperative for US national security. There is a dire need to work together to achieve the benefits of our bilateral strategic relations,” he said. At the State Department, spokesman Mark Toner told reporters that the US was proud of the facilitating role it played in finalising the Afghanistan-Pakistan Transit Trade Agreement.

“We believe other agreements and concrete projects, along with APTTA, will help reinforce and create links for trade, investment, and transport of goods, ideas and people from Almaty to the Indian Ocean,” he added.

In his interview, Secretary Gates endorsed suspicions that insurgents might have been tipped off that US spies had located two of their bomb-making plants.

“We don’t know the specifics of what happened,” he said. “There are suspicions and there are questions, but I think there was clearly disappointment on our part.”

Asked whether it was time to take a harder line with Pakistan, Mr Gates counselled patience and noted that the Pakistanis have not forgotten that the US abandoned them in the late 1980s after the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan.

“I think we have to be realistic about Pakistani distrust ... and their deep belief that when we’re done with Al Qaeda that we’ll be gone, again,” he said.

While Mr Gates focused on Pakistan’s role in the war against terror, the State Department’s statement on APTTA reflected a realisation in Washington that for a durable peace in the region, there has to be a greater cooperation among Afghanistan’s South and Central Asian neighbours.

In an article in The Washington Post earlier this week, former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger advised the United States to align its interests in Afghanistan with those of its neighbours.

“If their interests in Afghanistan are not related to ours to some extent, Afghanistan will exist under permanent threat,” he warned. The State Department described the transit agreement as a step in this direction.

The agreement was “a concrete demonstration of the common shared vision of development, prosperity and peace the two Presidents share, and it will make a significant contribution to regional stability”, Mr Toner said.