U.S. forces will stop taking a lead role in combat operations in Afghanistan next year but continue to support Afghan combat missions under a plan announced by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta that worried Afghans and surprised allies.

India and the United States have agreed to continue efforts to consolidate upon the "tremendous progress" made in strengthening their global strategic partnership and work towards implementing their civil nuclear deal.

In the wake of the U.S. raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound last May and deteriorating relations between Islamabad and Washington, Pakistani leaders have sought to play up their country’s relations with China, touting Beijing as an alternative partner to Washington.

A militant who acted as a senior operations organizer for al Qaeda was targeted and killed in one of two U.S. drone strikes launched against targets inside Pakistan last week, a U.S. official said. U.S. and Pakistani sources told Reuters that the target of the attack was Aslam Awan, a Pakistani national from Abbottabad, the same town where Osama bin Laden was killed last May by a U.S. commando team. They said he was targeted in a strike by a U.

Pakistan expects to re-open supply routes to NATO forces in Afghanistan, halted after a NATO cross-border air attack killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in November, but will impose tariffs, a senior security official told Reuters on Thursday. The move suggests tensions with the United States and NATO have eased, but more progress is needed for the kind of cooperation necessary to fight militancy in the border region which U.S.

Pakistan has rejected U.S. special envoy Marc Grossman's request to visit the country, a senior official said on Wednesday, highlighting the increased tensions between the uneasy allies. He did not elaborate on the reasons. "Ambassador Grossman asked to visit Pakistan but we conveyed to him that it was not possible at the moment," a senior government official, who declined to be named, told Reuters.

India and China have agreed to try to avoid flare-ups along their disputed 4,000-km border through the Himalayas, a positive development in often fractious relations between Asia's emerging giants. The two countries, which fought a brief but bloody border war in 1962, have increased their military presence on each side of the border in recent years as their fast-growing economies permit more spending on defence of remote regions.