What makes this statement significant is that it is precisely the assurance the United States and its allies are seeking to be able to reach a political settlement with the insurgents and exit from the country as quickly as possible. Indeed, the strategy of US President Barack Obama's administration has been to make sure that it can divide the Afghan Taliban — which seeks to regain power lost in the wake of 9/11 — from the al Qaeda-led jihadists who have a global agenda. Of course this separation is easier said than done.

This is not to say that it is completely impossible. If the nationalist jihadist forces can be divided from the transnational ones, then it's going to be a multi-year project, one that requires that Pakistan — the one player in the region that can provide the assistance needed to accomplish this task — to cooperate with the United States. For the Pakistanis, this is the best news they have heard since the jihadist war began almost nine years ago.

Pakistan lost its influence in Afghanistan to India after the fall of the Taliban regime and is eager to reverse the situation in their favour as much as possible. But Islamabad also wants Washington to recognize that it has a legitimate role to play in the shaping of a post-America Afghanistan. This is something the United States has agreed to, which would explain Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's remarks earlier this week in which she offered cautious support for negotiations with Pakistan-based insurgent entities such as the Haqqani network, which Washington continues to lump into the category of irreconcilable Taliban, given its ties with al-Qaeda.

In essence, such a strategy places Islamabad back where it used to be, which is a matter of great trepidation for New Delhi. India fears that the influence it has built up in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban is waning and that the Pakistanis could once again be in a position to back anti-India Islamist militants.

It is thus no coincidence that in recent days senior Indian government officials have for the first time accused the directorate of Pakistan's foreign intelligence service, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), of having been officially involved in the November 2008 attacks in Mumbai — something New Delhi had thus far refrained from doing. The United States, which needs to restore the balance of power between the two South Asian rivals (which had broken down due to the US-jihadist war), must secure Pakistani cooperation and placate India. For this reason both US Special Representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke and the US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen are in New Delhi.

The two senior American officials have been trying hard to convince India that the United States' compulsion to cooperate with Pakistan does not endanger Indian interests. Holbrooke spoke of India's role in a future Afghanistan. Mullen acknowledged that there were problems with the ISI's relations with Islamist militant groups, but said Washington had no choice but to 'stay engaged' with the intelligence service.

This is not very reassuring to the Indians, which is why they have to seek out other options. India has been trying to re-align with Iran and Russia on Afghanistan in an effort to counter Pakistan and the return of the Taliban.  On Thursday there were reports that Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao will travel next week to Moscow, where she will hold talks with Russian officials at the Kremlin on the political settlement in Afghanistan.

At a time when there is no dearth of Afghanistan-related problems for the United States, it doesn't need a re-emerging Moscow-Tehran-New Delhi axis to further complicate matters. But there is not much the Americans can do about it, so for now they will concentrate on working with the Pakistanis. This is one area where things seem to be going well, especially with Thursday's news that Pakistani Army Chief Gen. Ashfaq P. Kayani, who was due to retire in November, was given a three-year extension by the government.

Kayani has played a leading role in efforts to improve the political and security situation in Pakistan as well as bilateral relations with the United States, especially in the context of Afghanistan. The shift in the Pakistani attitude towards taking an aggressive stance against jihadists within its borders is a very nascent development and requires continuity of leadership, especially when it is not clear that a new army chief would necessarily pursue the current policy with the same vigour. This is one of those situations where individuals — at least in the short term — do matter in geopolitics.

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