U.S. not pressing Pakistan on terror: envoy

By Faisal Aziz

KARACHI (Reuters) - U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte rejected on Thursday suggestions that the United States was trying to dictate anti-terrorism policy to Pakistan's new government.

Negroponte and U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher arrived on Tuesday, shortly before Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani was sworn in to lead a government set on re-thinking Pakistan's approach in the U.S.-led war on terrorism.

The timing of their visit has angered many Pakistanis who see it as an attempt to influence the new government and shore up old U.S. ally President Pervez Musharraf, increasingly isolated since his allies lost a February election.

"There was no hidden agenda and certainly no desire to interfere or intervene in any way in the political arrangements that are developing," Negroponte told a news conference in Karachi, adding his trip had been planned for six or eight weeks.

"The suggestion that somehow we expect Pakistan to carry out activities on our behalf and at our behest that are not in Pakistan's interests is simply wrong."

Leaders of the new coalition government, led by the parties of assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto and former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, have spoken of the need for talks with militants based in remote mountains on the Afghan border.

That has apparently rung alarm bells in Washington and raised the prospect of Pakistani support ebbing.

Pakistani newspapers criticized the visit by the two U.S. officials and said the United States should give the new government time to work out its strategy.