The Pakistan-America relationship is 'one defined by mutual suspicion, mutual need, awkward disclosures about Pakistan's nuclear activities and a range of urgent issues from tensions with India to the drive to crush terrorism and finding Osama bin Laden,' says the New York Times.

In an interview last week, [US Secretary of State Colin] Powell said the current priority was clear, the paper said. "The biggest thing we need right now is more cooperation along the border," he said, referring to the joint efforts by American forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan forces on their side to flush out remnants of Al Qaeda and the Taliban. 

Titled 'Ex-generals, a common language,'  the article says Powell has spoken with Pakistan President General Musharraf at least 81 times since September 11, 2001.

"The two leaders would often slip into the 'general to general' mode, once such instance being in mid 2002, when India and Pakistan seemed poised on the brink of a nuclear shootout.

"All this talk about nukes, you know, it's unthinkable," Powell told Musharraf, said the Times quoting officials. "I know that," Musharraf reportedly replied. 

"Well, we've got to stop talking about it, and we've got to find a way out of this," officials quoted the secretary as saying. Later that fall, tensions between India and Pakistan began to subside, says the paper.

The article goes on to say that Washington's other priority is to learn as much as possible about the activities of Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani scientist who admitted sharing nuclear technology with Iran and North Korea.
 
"Pakistan's cooperation on those matters is so great that they have had no choice but to avoid criticising Pakistan for pardoning Khan," it quotes American officials as saying.

In return, a Pakistani official said the United States had forgiven half of the $3 billion Pakistan owed it, helped reschedule $30 billion in debt to other countries and also helped supply limited military aid to Pakistan, the paper said.   

State Department officials said in 2002, when evidence of Pakistan's transfer of nuclear technology to North Korea started surfacing, Powell had another talk with Musharraf. "Anything about North Korea is just devastating," Powell told Musharraf.  "You can't do it."

The officials said General Musharraf denied any knowledge of the North Korean connection but promised it would stop if true, the Times report said.

Another case of unintended consequences with Pakistan, the paper said, "occurred when the Bush administration installed an anti-Taliban government in Kabul in early 2002.

'The Persian-speaking Tajiks who were given most of the power were friendly to India, Pakistan's enemy. That led Pakistani security people who had long been close to the Pashtun-speaking Taliban to welcome their presence in border areas, where, in the eyes of Islamabad, they could form a friendly buffer zone. Now that President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan has brought more Pushtun representatives into the government, Pakistan's concerns about the Kabul government have been allayed to some extent,"  the newspaper said.