US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will arrive in Islamabad on a brief visit Thursday in a bid to ease growing tensions between India and Pakistan following last week's Mumbai attacks, a Pakistani official said Wednesday.
"She will stay in Pakistan for some five to six hours during which she will hold meetings with the top political leadership, including the prime minister and foreign minister," a spokesman for Pakistan's Foreign Ministry told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
Rice would arrive from New Delhi where she was meeting Indian leaders Wednesday against the backdrop of the Mumbai terror attack which killed 188 people.
Indian police blamed Muslim militant groups based in Pakistan for the attack, straining the delicate relations between the two nuclear-armed South Asian neighbours.
Pakistani military officials over the weekend warned they would move troops from the western border with Afghanistan and redeploy them on eastern border with India if they felt threatened.
Withdrawal of Pakistani forces from the tribal region where they are fighting Taliban and al-Qaeda militants launching cross-border attacks on international forces in Afghanistan would complicate US-led international efforts.
The US has stepped up its diplomacy to soothe India and increase pressure on Pakistan to cooperate in investigations into the Mumbai massacre.
US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Michael Mullen also arrived in Pakistan on a two-day visit on Wednesday. He was expected to meet with Pakistani military chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and other officials to discuss border security.