Pakistan may let US investigators question the wives of Osama bin Laden, a US official said, a decision that could begin to stabilise relations between the allies that have been severely strained by the killing of the al-Qaeda leader.
However, senior Pakistani government officials in Islamabad said on Tuesday no decision had been taken on the US request.
Bin Laden was shot dead on May 2nd in a top-secret raid in the northern Pakistani town of Abbottabad to the embarrassment of Pakistan, which has for years denied the world's most wanted man was on its soil.
The government is under pressure to explain how the al-Qaeda leader was found in the garrison town, a short distance from the main military academy, and faces criticism at home over the perceived violation of sovereignty by the US commando team.
Pakistani co-operation is crucial to combating Islamist militants and to bringing stability to Afghanistan, and the US administration has been keen to contain the fallout.
US investigators, who have been sifting through a huge stash of material seized in bin Laden's high-walled compound, want to question his three wives as they seek to trace his movements and roll up his global militant network.
"The Pakistanis now appear willing to grant access. Hopefully they'll carry through on the signals they're sending," a US official familiar with the matter said in Washington. There was no immediate comment from the White House.
A Pakistani government official denied that permission for the US questioning of the women had been given, saying local investigators had yet to finish their inquiry. "It's too early to even think about it," said the official, referring to the US request to question the women.
Pakistan says the three wives, one from Yemen and two from Saudi Arabia, and their children, will be repatriated and Pakistan was making contacts with their countries but they had yet to say they would take them, the official said.
Bin Laden's discovery has deepened suspicion that Pakistan's pervasive Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) spy agency, which has a long history of contacts with militants, may have had ties with the al-Qaeda leader, or that some of its agents did.
US legislators have been asking tough questions, with some calling for a cut in billions of dollars of US aid to the nuclear-armed Muslim country.
But the United States has stopped short of accusing Pakistan of providing shelter to bin Laden. "We believe it is very important to maintain a co-operative relationship with Pakistan, precisely because it's in our national security interests to do so," White House spokesman Jay Carney said yesterday.
Nato secretary-general Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Western governments had no alternative to co-operating with Pakistan in the fight against Islamic militants.
"If we are to assure long-term peace and stability in Afghanistan and beyond, then we need positive engagement with Pakistan," Mr Rasmussen told the World Affairs Council in Atlanta yesterday.
Reuters