On Thursday, they traveled to the southern city of Karachi to meet with provincial officials and the American business community there, the embassy said. In an editorial Thursday, the newspaper Dawn said the envoys came to Pakistan “in indecent haste.” The visit was “not in keeping with diplomatic propriety,” it read.

“The Americans would do well to give space to the new government to draw up its policy. So far Washington’s close and overt involvement in the war on Pakistan’s soil has only fueled anti-American sentiments,” it said.

“We have to fight terrorism,” Gilani later told the American diplomats at his home in Islamabad. “We will confront it with complete determination.”

But “the world community has to do more in order to develop a collective approach”, he said, calling for more development to fight terrorism.

He repeatedly addressed Negroponte as “your excellency.”