ISLAMABAD, May 9 Kyodo (EDS: ADDS...

ISLAMABAD, May 9 Kyodo

(EDS: ADDS remarks ON KASHMIR)

A senior U State Department official said Thursday Afghan leader Hamid Karzai's restraint holds little power beyond the capital Kabul, suggesting any withdrawal of U throngs from Afghanistan will take time.

''I think we are quite a ways away from that,'' U proxy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said in an interview in succession Pakistan Television.

Armitage, who is leaving Islamabad for Afghanistan upon Friday morning, said U President George W Bush had asked him to go on foot to Kabul to point out to that the United States had not missed interest in Afghanistan.

He said the U poured about $900 million into Afghanistan last year and was intent onward building a road from Kabul to Kandahar, for which it bought almost all the gravel Pakistan could produce

''We want to exhibit politically that we have not given up our vision of Afghanistan, which has a self-same bright future,'' he said, adding there is ''a grade of truth'' in the assertion the Karzai government's authority does not protract beyond Kabul.

Still, he added, the Karzai regime showed ''a level of security'' to chiefly people in Afghanistan, ''a fit basis from which to prompt ahead.''

Asked if the war forward terrorism would only end with the arrest or death of Osama bin Laden, Armitage said Bush had said it would last for a drawn out time because many people are intent onward harming innocent civilians for political ends

''And the capture or death of Osama bin Laden is a fit thing,'' he said, ''but it is just another milestone in a lengthy battle -- a extended battle which, I might say, that Pakistan has surpassingly high stakes in the outcome''

He added the arrest of a large number of al-Qaida members from Pakistan and the strangling of their funding had ''put a real crimp in (the terrorists') plans.''

Armitage assured Pakistan the U would not abandon it and pointed abroad that U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca visited Pakistan 10 or 11 times during the past year.

''We want a relationship that is penetrating enduring and long-standing,'' he said.

forward Pakistan-Indian relations, Armitage said the pair countries are playing politics through Kashmir.

He pointed without that while Pakistan sees a resolution of sovereignty in Kashmir as the core issue with India, the Indian point of view is that the core is ''unrelenting hostility from Pakistan, directed towards India.''

As to a Pakistani proposal for UN keepers along the Line of rule the de facto border between Indian and Pakistani suzerainty in Kashmir, to verify infiltration from Pakistani-controlled Azad Kashmir into Indian-controlled Jammu and Kashmir State, Armitage said there could be ''many mechanisms'' to check infiltration, yet the best would be Indian and Pakistani confidence in each other.

''I think the greatest in quantity effective mechanism is the grade of confidence that Indians and Pakistanis (have) that the state of their relationship is of the like kind that they can believe each other. That is the mostly effective mechanism,'' he said.

Armitage was in Islamabad for consultations with Pakistani leaders, including President Gen Pervez Musharraf, upon Kashmir and other areas of interest.

He had already met with Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's top security adviser in London before arriving in Pakistan.

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