The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, Washington

US President Barack Obama has offered Pakistan an expanded strategic partnership, including additional military and economic cooperation, The Washington Post reported Monday.

The newspaper said the offer, including an effort to help reduce tensions between Pakistan and India, was contained in a two-page letter delivered to President Asif Ali Zardari this month by Obama's national security adviser James Jones.

It was accompanied by assurances from Jones that the United States will increase its military and civilian efforts in Afghanistan and that it plans no early withdrawal, the report said.

Obama's speech on Tuesday night at the US Military Academy at West Point will address primarily the Afghanistan aspects of the strategy. But despite the public and political attention focused on the number of new troops, Pakistan has been the hot core of the months-long strategy review, the paper noted.

The long-term consequences of failure there, the review concluded, far outweigh those in Afghanistan, according to The Post.

"We can't succeed without Pakistan," the paper quotes a senior administration official as saying. "You have to differentiate between public statements and reality. There is nobody who is under any illusions about this."

This official and others emphasized that without "changing the nature of U.S.-Pakistan relations in a new direction, you're not going to win in Afghanistan," The Post said.

"And if you don't win in Afghanistan, then Pakistan will automatically be imperiled, and that will make Afghanistan look like child's play," the paper quotes the official as saying.

US offers, outlined during Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's October visit to Islamabad, center on a far more comprehensive and long-term bilateral relationship, the report noted.

It would feature enhanced development and trade assistance, improved intelligence collaboration and a more secure and upgraded military equipment pipeline, more public praise and less public criticism of Pakistan, and an initiative to build greater regional cooperation among Pakistan, India and Afghanistan, the paper pointed out.

Zardari took over as president last year after the assassination of his wife, former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, in late 2007.

Dogged by accusations of graft during Bhutto's two terms as prime minister in the 1990s, Zardari has never enjoyed the popularity of his charismatic wife and has been facing a barrage of attacks from hostile sections of the media.

The opposition to Zardari has been building as the army has been battling Islamist militants in the northwest who have responded with a wave of bomb attacks.