"How can you have a strategic dialogue without including the military," Special US Representative for Pakistan and Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke told reporters at the Foggy Bottom headquarters of the State Department.
Kiyani is a non-controversial officer, who had in the past not come to notice for any dubious association with the Taliban or Al Qaeda or any of Pakistan's fundamentalist organisations.
The people of Pakistan are in a dark, foreboding mood.According to an International Republican Institute opinion poll, as many as 86 percent of Pakistanis believe their country is headed in the wrong direction.
Gen Kiyani has already withdrawn regular army troops from South Waziristan as demanded by Baitullah and has lifted the economic blocade imposed against the Mehsuds.
President General Pervez Musharraf on Wednesday handed over charge of the Pakistan army to General Ashfaq Pervez Kiyani.
General Taj has been closely associated with Musharraf, having been his military secretary at the time of the 1999 coup.
State-run PTV quoted the Inter-Services Public Relations as saying that Kiyani will take up his new assignment once the President, who is seeking re-election in the October 6 ballot, gives up his uniform.
Musharraf is widely believed to have chosen former ISI chief Lt Gen Ashfaq Pervez Kiyani as his successor to head the Army, says Newsweek in its upcoming issue.
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