Bush's agenda for talks with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in the Oval Office on Saturday included several sticky issues.

Among them:

-The unsuccessful manhunt for al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, which the Pakistan army indicated last month was being downgraded.

-Pakistan's nuclear-armed, often-hostile relationship with neighboring India, the world's largest democracy.

-The illicit nuclear trafficking of A.Q. Khan, the Pakistani scientist implicated in selling his country's nuclear secrets to Libya, North Korea, Iran and possibly other countries.

-Musharraf's own backtracking on a pledge to relinquish his military post.

Musharraf, whose visit was to congratulate Bush on his re-election, also has unanswered wishes for the administration.

He has repeatedly urged Washington to engage more aggressively in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. He was expected to raise with Bush the need to help resolve that dispute as well as issues of poverty and illiteracy important to Muslims.

Despite such potentially irritable differences, nothing has dampened Washington's view of Pakistan as a crucial ally in the war on terror. In particular, Bush repeatedly cites Pakistan's capture of al-Qaeda suspects, several of whom have been handed over to US officials.