Top U.S. and Pakistan military officials talk strategy

Top U.S. and Pakistani military officials met this week on a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Indian Ocean to discuss the presence of militant safe havens in Pakistan and their role in Afghan violence, officials said on Thursday.

But Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, played down any expectation that the day-long meeting aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln on Tuesday would lead quickly to progress against militants operating in Pakistan's northwestern tribal region.
"It's just going to take some time," Mullen told reporters at a Pentagon briefing. "Expectations for instantaneous results I think are probably a little bit too high."
But he said: "I came away from the meeting very encouraged that the focus is where it needs to be."
The meeting at sea was the fifth between Mullen and Pakistan's Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ashfaq Kayani and took place amid mounting U.S. concern about insurgent violence in Afghanistan following last week's suicide bomb attacks on a major U.S. military base in the southeast and the combat deaths of 10 French elite troops.