US President George W Bush said on Monday he understood Afghanistan's anger at attacks by militants based on the border with Pakistan but urged talks to resolve the "testy situation."
"We can help calm the situation down and develop a strategy that will prevent these extremists from developing safe haven and having freedom of movement," he said after talks with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. "There can be more dialogue between the Pakistan and the Afghan governments," said Bush, who was on a farewell trip to Europe. "There needs to be better co-operation."
The US leader stopped short of endorsing Afghan President Hamid Karzai's warning of possible cross-border strikes at militants in Pakistan but said he understood the frustration in Kabul.
"It's a testy situation there, and if I'm a president of a country and people are coming allegedly from one country to another, to kill innocent civilians on my side I'd be concerned about it," said Bush.
The US leader also called for a new "jirga" or traditional council of tribal leaders in the region to tackle the issue, saying: "That'd be a good idea to restart the jirga process." "There's a lot of common ground," he said. "It's in no-one's interest that extremists have a safe haven from which to operate."
"Our strategy is to deny safe haven to extremists who would do harm to innocent people. And that's the strategy of Afghanistan, it needs to be the strategy of Pakistan. It's in all our interests," he said. Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said in a statement that he would "like to make it absolutely clear that Pakistan shall defend its territorial sovereignty."
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