The top US and Pakistani military leaders will meet in the coming days in hopes of fixing strained ties after a US raid that killed Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, the Pentagon said Thursday.
Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mike Mullen and his Pakistani counterpart General Ashfaq Kayani will sit down for talks on the sidelines of a NATO conference beginning in Spain on Friday, Mullen's spokesman Captain John Kirby told AFP.
It will be the first meeting between the two since the May 2 nighttime military raid in which US Navy Seals, without first notifying Islamabad, killed the Al-Qaeda leader in the compound in Abbottabad where he had been hiding.
As relations worsened in the aftermath of the raid, Washington announced that it could cut some of the $2.7 billion in military aid it sends to Pakistan.
Islamabad, for its part, ordered as many as 200 US military trainers out of the country in the aftermath of the operation.
While relations are frayed, Pakistan is seen as key for US military operations in Afghanistan, where the United States is to trying to beat down a resilient Taliban insurgency.
US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta expressed frustration Wednesday that Islamabad has so far failed to crack down on Haqqani network militants that Washington suspects attacked the US embassy and NATO headquarters in Kabul.
Mullen plans to discuss "issues related to the increasing militant threat we face in Afghanistan" during his meeting with Kayani, Kirby said.
"Cooperation is beginning to improve in the wake of the bin Laden raid, and we find that encouraging," he continued.
"It is still a complex relationship, and the chairman certainly desires to see it deepen as we move forward. That the two senior military leaders are meeting again, this time in Seville, is a positive step. There is much to discuss."
