Kerry 'Confident' U.S. Will Reach Security Pact with Kabul

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Thursday he was confident Washington would reach an agreement with Kabul that would allow American troops to remain in Afghanistan beyond 2014.

"We're making progress, we're working on it. I am personally confident that we will have an agreement," Kerry told reporters after talks with the Pakistani government in Islamabad.

"I feel very comfortable where we are and, as I say to you, I expect this agreement to be completed in an appropriate time," he told a news conference.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai suspended talks on the agreement in June, furious at the manner in which the Taliban opened a liaison office in Qatar seen as an embassy for a government in waiting.

The deal would allow for a limited U.S. military presence to remain in Afghanistan after the U.S.-led NATO combat mission finishes at the end of next year.

Its mission would be to counter any threat that remains from al-Qaida, and to train further Afghan security forces.

"The president has made it clear that he will at the appropriate time be announcing an ongoing American presence and the negotiations on a bilateral security agreement are underway," Kerrytold reporters in Islamabad.

Kerry also invited Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif for talks with President Barack Obama during his visit to Islamabad.

"To ensure that we continue our important bilateral conversation at the highest levels I have extended on behalf of the president of the United States an invitation to Prime Minister Sharif to meet with the president at a bilateral meeting with him in the United States this fall," Kerry said.

Kerry, the most senior U.S. official to visit Pakistan since Sharif was elected in May, was speaking after talks with senior government officials.

The nuclear-armed state is a key but fractious ally in the 12-year-war against al-Qaida. The most public dispute is the U.S. drone strikes on militants that Islamabad officially condemns.

Kerry said the two sides had agreed to resume strategic dialogue to foster "deeper, broader and more comprehensive partnership" after a two-year period that saw relations stumble from crisis to crisis.

"I can tell you unequivocally that we do share a long-term vision of the relationship and I believe that in Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif we have someone who's committed to try to grow that relationship," Kerry told reporters.

Washington is determined to move the relationship with Pakistan to a full partnership and find ways to deal with "individual issues that have been irritants over the last years", Kerry said, adding that Obama was looking forward to meeting Sharif "in a month or so in the U.S.".

Pakistani-U.S. relations have recovered somewhat from the crisis sparked by the U.S. killing of al-Qaida mastermind Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in May 2011.

Although leaked documents show Pakistani leaders have privately supported U.S. drone strikes on Taliban and al-Qaida operatives, the government officially condemns them as a violation of sovereignty.