Officials from Pakistan, Afghanistan and the United States Tuesday discussed the security situation on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan in the first meeting following the killing of al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, DPA reported.
The meeting was attended by US special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Marc Grossman, Pakistan's Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir and Afghan Deputy Foreign Minister Jaweed Ludin.
Grossman told a press briefing in the Pakistani capital that bin Laden's death, in Abbottabad, a town around 60 kilometres from Islamabad, was beneficial to all three countries since al-Qaeda was threatening the regional democracies.
However, "we want to put more diplomacy behind reconciliation efforts (with the Taliban) in Afghanistan," at the same time, he said.
Bashir said that his country would continue to cooperate with the international community to end the conflict in Afghanistan.
The meeting came around five weeks after a similar meeting due to be held in Brussels was cancelled because of tensions between Islamabad and Washington over the arrest of a CIA contractor for killing two people in the eastern city of Lahore.
Raymond Davis was released and repatriated after paying compensation to the victims' families last month, a move that has to some extent eased relations.
But bin Laden's death and his reported burial at sea has raised many questions, further complicating relations at the public level.
"I cannot answer every conspiracy theory," said Grossman when confronted with theories that it had not been bin Laden who was killed.
"Osama Bin Laden was killed here, as President [Barack] Obama has said," Grossman said.
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