Pakistan may let US investigators question the wives of Osama bin Laden, a US official said, a decision that could begin to stabilize relations between the prickly allies that have been severely strained by the killing of the al-Qaeda leader.
"The Pakistanis now appear willing to grant access. Hopefully they'll carry through on the signals they're sending," a US official familiar with the matter said in Washington.
There was no immediate comment from the White House.
Meanwhile, Pakistan's foreign ministry said yesterday it had yet to receive a formal request from the United States.
However, senior Pakistani government officials in Islamabad said yesterday no decision had been taken on the US request.
US investigators, who have been sifting through a huge stash of material seized in bin Laden's high-walled compound, want to question his three wives as they seek to trace his movements and roll up his global militant network.
A Pakistani government official denied that permission for the US questioning of the women had been given, saying local investigators had yet to finish their inquiry.
"It's too early to even think about it," said the official, referring to the US request to question the women.
Pakistan says the three wives, one from Yemen and two from Saudi Arabia, and their children, will be repatriated and Pakistan was making contacts with their countries but they had yet to say they would take them, the official said.
Bin Laden was shot dead on May 2 in a top-secret raid in the northern Pakistani town of Abbottabad to the embarrassment of Pakistan which has for years denied the world's most wanted man was on its soil.
The government is under pressure to explain how the al-Qaeda leader was found in the garrison town, a short distance from the main military academy.
Pakistan Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani, in his first major address since bin Laden's killing, rejected suggestions of incompetence or even complicity in hiding the al-Qaeda leader.
"Allegations of complicity or incompetence are absurd," Gilani told parliament on Monday, saying it was disingenuous for anyone to accuse Pakistan of "being in cahoots" with al-Qaeda.
US President Barack Obama said on Sunday that bin Laden likely had "some sort" of a support network inside Pakistan, but added it would take investigations by Pakistan and the United States to find out the nature of that support.
Pakistan's main opposition party has called on Gilani and President Asif Ali Zardari to resign over the breach of sovereignty by US special forces who slipped in from Afghanistan on helicopters to storm the bin Laden compound
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