U.S. looks forward to wide-ranging engagement with Pak: State Dept.

Washington, July 17 (ANI): The United States has said it looks forward to intensive engagement with Pakistan on wide-ranging issues of mutual interest as Washington wants the bilateral relationship back on track.

"We want to get our relationship back on track. We look to the future of our relationship with Pakistan. So we look forward to more intensively engaging with them on a whole range of issues," The Dawn quoted State Department spokesman, Patrick Ventrell, as saying.

Ventrell did not list the issues of interest to both nations, but referred to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's meeting in a trilateral group with Pakistani and Afghan foreign ministers in Tokyo this month as an example of cooperation.

"We continue our intensive engagement with the Pakistanis, going forward," he said.

He added that the U.S. has been pleased at the opening of the Pakistani ground lines of communication for transporting NATO supplies into Afghanistan.

American officials, he said, are working with their Pakistani counterparts to clear the backlog of containers, as a result of the closure of the key Pakistani routes about seven months ago.

"We are talking about a lot of backlog, a number of containers, very significant amount of material. So, it's going to take some time to find an efficient way to get them all through," he said. (ANI)