WASHINGTON (NYTIMES) – US President Donald Trump, who on Twitter last year accused Pakistan’s leaders of “nothing but lies & deceit”, welcomed the country’s prime minister to the White House on Monday (July 22) in an effort to mend relations and seek help in ending the war in neighbouring Afghanistan.

Seated next to Prime Minister Imran Khan in the Oval Office, Mr Trump gushed about the prospect of improved relations and trade with Pakistan and said he expected that Mr Khan would help negotiate peace in Afghanistan so US troops could come home.

“There is tremendous potential between our country and Pakistan,” Mr Trump said during a 40-minute question-and-answer session with reporters from both countries. “I think Pakistan is going to help us out to extricate ourselves.”

Administration officials believe pressure from Pakistan could push the Taleban into a permanent ceasefire in Afghanistan, though they acknowledged that promises of such help from the Pakistani government had failed to materialise in the past.

“Washington could be overestimating Islamabad’s influence over the Taleban. So there’s potential for disappointment,” said Mr Arif Rafiq, a policy analyst and commentator on relations between the two countries. “But, like Trump said, Pakistan is a ‘big country’ and important in its own right. It’s critical for Washington to maintain a long-term partnership with Islamabad and not cede the region to Beijing.”

Mr Trump has repeatedly said he wants to withdraw US forces from Afghanistan and end the nearly 18-year war. But ties between Pakistan’s intelligence service and extremist groups in the region have long frustrated American hopes of a peaceful regional solution.

The President was more optimistic on Monday about Pakistan’s cooperation, even as he suggested that he always had military options if diplomacy failed.

“I could win that war in a week. I just don’t want to kill 10 million people,” Mr Trump said, describing what he said were prepared military plans in Afghanistan. “If I wanted to win that war, Afghanistan would be wiped off the face of the earth. It would be gone in 10 days.”

Mr Khan – once Pakistan’s star cricket player and now, like Mr Trump, a celebrity-turned-leader – agreed quickly that seeking peace in Afghanistan was the better option.

“There is no military solution in Afghanistan,” Mr Khan said. “If you go all-out military, there would be millions and millions of people who would die.”

Mr Khan arrived in the United States on Sunday, landing at Dulles International Airport in Virginia, where a picture of him riding the airport’s people mover with other travellers caused a minor social media uproar about the lack of pomp and circumstance.

The Prime Minister received more of an official welcome on Monday at the White House, where Mr Trump greeted him in front of the West Wing before a bilateral meeting and a working lunch.

Relations between Pakistan and the US have been strained for years because of Pakistan’s ties with extremist groups and its lack of cooperation with the United States’ campaign against terrorist organisations since the Sept 11 attacks.

But Mr Trump deepened the rift in January 2018. He tweeted that the United States had “foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid” and accused Pakistan’s leaders of treating US officials like fools and giving safe haven to terrorists: “No more!”

Three days later, Mr Trump suspended security aid to Pakistan, shutting down the flow of up to US$1.3 billion (S$1.77 billion) in aid each year with a demand that Pakistan’s government cut off ties with extremists.

US officials said last week that the President’s meeting with Mr Khan was an attempt to repair relations between the two countries, though they said the Trump administration remained “clear-eyed” about the continuing links between Pakistan and terrorist groups.

A senior administration official had told reporters that Mr Trump appreciated Mr Khan’s earlier statements that Pakistan would no longer be a refuge for terrorist groups. But the official said the US remained concerned given that terrorist organisations – including Jaish-e-Mohammed, Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Haqqani network – continued to operate in Pakistan with the tacit approval of its national intelligence and military agencies.

Pakistan’s continued imprisonment of Shakil Afridi, a Pakistani doctor who reportedly helped the US confirm the location of Osama bin Laden, also remains a sore spot between the two countries, officials said.

Mr Trump said on Monday that he planned to press for the release of Afridi. A tribal court in north-western Pakistan in 2012 sentenced Afridi to 33 years in prison after he helped the CIA pin down Osama’s location by running a vaccination drive backed by the US.

Mr Khan has accused past Pakistani rulers of selling themselves short and kowtowing to American dictates. But before the meeting on Monday, Mr Khan had said he wanted a reset in the bilateral ties.

In Pakistan, local television news networks gave breathless coverage to Mr Khan’s visit. The Prime Minister’s address a day earlier to a rally of thousands of Pakistani-Americans in Capital One Arena in Washington was portrayed as a testament to the Pakistani leader’s popularity in the US.

Before meeting Mr Trump, Mr Khan told his cheering supporters at the Washington rally that he had never bowed to anyone except Allah and would not leave his countrymen embarrassed or disappointed during the meeting with Mr Trump.

But on Monday, Mr Khan was far less confrontational, repeatedly praising Mr Trump for his leadership. “He has now forced people to end the war, to have a settlement,” Mr Khan said of Mr Trump. “This is a critical time.”

Mr Trump said he hoped Pakistan could help resolve the war so the US could curtail its security measures in Afghanistan. He said that if that happened, the US might restore some of the funding to Pakistan that he cut off last year.

“I think that Pakistan is going to be a very big help,” the President said, adding later: “I think Pakistan will save millions of lives in Afghanistan. As of this moment, they are working very hard.”

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