Ahead of United States President George W Bush's [Images] maiden visit to India, China said on Tuesday it would welcome a 'positive' American role in resolving pending differences between India and Pakistan.

"China welcomes the United States to play a positive role in promoting the improvement of India-Pakistan relations," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao told reporters at a bi-weekly briefing.

"We welcome the United States in carrying out normal state-to-state relationship with India and Pakistan. We hope such a bilateral relationship will be conducive to peace, stability and development in of the whole of Asia," Liu said.

He noted that India and Pakistan are both important neighbours of China and Beijing [Images] enjoys good neighbourly relationships with both.

"Over the years, we are satisfied with the development of relationships with both Pakistan and India. We are also happy about the normalisation of India-Pakistan relationship," he said.

"We hope that such a momentum could be maintained and this could be conducive for the pushing forward for a solution on the pending issues between the two countries," the spokesman added.

Earlier, China had given a guarded response to the proposed Indo-US civilian nuclear deal. "China is clear on the issues in US-India nuclear cooperation," Liu told PTI when asked to comment on the proposed Indo-US nuclear deal.