By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, January 9, 2010; A06

ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN -- Two leading U.S. senators attempted Friday to depict U.S.-Pakistani relations as a crucial, permanent friendship, but their brief visit to the Pakistani capital highlighted tensions between the anti-terrorist allies, especially a sharp disagreement over strikes by unmanned aircraft against suspected Taliban and al-Qaeda targets.

"Friends don't always agree on every issue," Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said at a news conference in Islamabad, adding that the United States will "try to find common ground" with Pakistani leaders on the drone issue but that "we have to do everything we feel is necessary to protect Americans from the attacks of terrorists who may be based here."

On Thursday, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari asked McCain and Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.), who traveled here with two other senators, to seek a halt to the drone attacks. He said they are undermining domestic support for the war against Islamist militants and asked that the United States give Pakistan the technology to carry out such strikes on its own.

Washington has stepped up its use of the controversial strikes near the Afghan border since the suicide bombing at a U.S. base in eastern Afghanistan on Dec. 30 that killed seven CIA officers and contractors.

In the latest raid Friday, suspected U.S. missiles killed four people and injured three in the North Waziristan tribal area, the sixth attack in the region in a little more than a week, the Associated Press reported. Two Pakistani intelligence officials said a pair of missiles struck a house and a vehicle in a village near the town of Miran Shah. They did not identify the victims.

The drones sometimes kill civilians as well as the targeted militants, but they are considered a highly effective weapon against the elusive Islamist guerrillas in a rugged area that is legally off limits to U.S. ground forces. Pakistani army and civilian leaders privately accept the drone attacks but face strong opposition from the public.

Lieberman stressed the importance of bilateral cooperation against Islamist extremism and tried to reassure Pakistanis that the United States will not abandon them as it did after Soviet troops withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989. He said the two countries are "bound together forever" by common values and a "shared determination to defeat the evil of terrorism and extremism."

McCain also played down the disagreements as "respectful differences among friends" and said that "all of us are aware that we cannot succeed in Afghanistan unless we succeed in Pakistan." He was referring to the new U.S. plan for a surge in troops and civilian experts over the next 18 months, which the Obama administration hopes can turn around the flagging war against Afghan Taliban forces.

But the senator from Arizona took a tough stance on the drone issue, brushing aside a journalist who asked whether he understood that fatal drone attacks soured Pakistani opinions of the United States. McCain said some "elements" operating in Pakistan would like to "go to Afghanistan and kill Americans" and "reestablish Afghanistan as a base for attacks on the United States and our allies. That's what I understand."

Several other recent sources of friction between the two countries arose during the visit, highlighting the uneasy nature of their partnership. The issues included Pakistani resentment of conditions on a $7 billion aid package that the United States has pledged over the next five years.

Lieberman said that he understood why some Pakistanis are "troubled" by the reporting requirements on the aid but that they include "nothing meant to be offensive or mistrustful." He described the aid package, known as the Kerry-Lugar bill, as "a very costly expression," at a difficult economic time, of the long-term U.S. commitment to the relationship with Pakistan.

Lieberman and McCain were accompanied by Sens. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) and John Thune (R-S.D). The group visited Afghanistan this week and left Pakistan late Friday.