US presses Pakistan to co-operate

Posters of Bin Laden, a hero to some, are openly sold

US Secretary of State Colin Powell has had a "positive" telephone conversation with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.

"It was a positive conversation. They discussed the need for co-operation against terrorism and the secretary received from the Pakistani president a commitment to work with us as we go forward," Mr Boucher told reporters.

I wish to assure President Bush and the US government of our unstinted co-operation in the fight against terrorism

President Musharraf

Earlier, Mr Powell has said he planned to telephone General Musharraf with "a specific list of things that we think would be useful for them to work on with us."

Pakistan is one of the few countries that recognise Taleban rule in neighbouring Afghanistan, where Saudi-born Osama Bin Laden, identified by Mr Powell as a prime suspect in the attacks, is reported to be sheltering.

Mr Powell said at a press conference that Pakistan was a friend of the United States, but he added that the relationship had had its "ups and downs".

Mounting anxiety

The US and some of its allies have long been urging Pakistan to push the hardline Taleban to expel Mr Bin Laden. He is alleged to have been behind the 1998 US embassy bombings in Africa which killed more than 200 people.

Afghans are already coming under scrutiny

Since Tuesday's attacks, correspondents say there is growing anxiety in the region that the US might launch attacks on Afghanistan. Foreign agencies have already evacuated their workers from the capital Kabul.

The BBC's Susannah Price in Islamabad says Pakistanis fear they may be caught in the middle.

Taleban officials had hinted on Wednesday that they would consider extraditing Mr Bin Laden if there was proof of his involvement.

But the movement's reclusive leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, has in the meantime protested Mr Bin Laden's innocence, saying he could not have planned the attacks because he did not have any pilots under his command.

President Musharraf met for three hours with top aides at his official residence.

"We regard terrorism as an evil that threatens the world community," he said in a statement. "I wish to assure President Bush of our unstinted co-operation in the fight against terrorism."

Pakistan may have to take sides over Osama

Later on Thursday, he met US ambassador Wendy Chamberlin after she presented her credentials as Washington's new envoy to Islamabad.

"We had a meeting of minds. The president pledged his co-operation," she told journalists after the talks

Double act

Pakistan supported Mr Bin Laden during his fight against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, a resistance movement financed with US dollars.

Mr Bin Laden allegedly received training from the CIA itself.

Pakistan has helped the US in the past, President Bush noted on Wednesday, recalling the country's extradition of Ramzi Yousef, accused of carrying out an attack on the World Trade Center in 1993.

In that attack, six people died and more than 1,000 others were injured.

The 1993 incident pales against the scale of Tuesday's attacks, in which the twin towers of the World Trade Center were destroyed with the deliberate crashing of two US airliners, leaving thousands feared dead.