ISLAMABAD: CIA chief Leon Panetta on Friday held talks in Pakistan and found agreement on intelligence cooperation as President Barack Obama nears a decision on troop deployments to Afghanistan, Islamabad said.

Panetta held talks with Prime Minister Yousauf Raza Gilani on Washington’s policy review in Afghanistan, said the premier’s office in a brief statement. Panetta also called on President Asif Ali Zardari. It was his second visit since taking office this year and comes a week after US National Security Adviser James Jones held similar talks in Pakistan.

Official sources told Arab News Panetta discussed the war against terrorism and other issues in his meetings with Pakistani top officials. Obama has said he is weeks away from unveiling a long-awaited war strategy review in neighboring Afghanistan, where commanders have warned the conflict will be lost without an extra 40,000 US troops. He has reportedly increased pressure on Islamabad to fight not just militants who attack within Pakistan, but those using Pakistan as a base from which to fight the Kabul government and Western troops in Afghanistan.

Some Pakistani officials have expressed concern that any major US troop increase in Afghanistan could push Taleban fighters into Pakistan. Yet Islamabad has warned against any precipitous US troop drawdown in case Afghan fighters pour across the border, exacerbating the rising security problems Pakistan has faced since the 2001 US-led invasion of Afghanistan.

Earlier on Friday, a US missile attack killed 10 people, including foreign militants, in Pakistan’s Machhikhel region in north Waziristan, the second such attack in two days, Pakistani security officials said.

The US military does not, as a rule, confirm drone attacks, but its armed forces and the Central Intelligence Agency operating in Afghanistan are the only forces that deploy pilotless drones in the region.