WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama is all for the stability and progress of Pakistan and desires to take Pakistan-US cooperative relations to “unprecedented heights,” Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said.

The Foreign Minister, who accompanied Prime Minister Syed Yusaf Raza Gilani at Sunday’s bilateral meeting with President Obama at the Blair House, said the US leader had accepted Pakistani premier’s invitation to visit the country.

“The talks were comprehensive during which President Obama said he wants to see a strong and prosperous Pakistan,” Qureshi told Pakistani journalists after the 40-minute meeting with Prime Minister Gilani on the sidelines of Nuclear Security Summit.

Qureshi said President Obama recalled fond memories of his visit to Pakistan in college days.

During the meeting, Obama recognized the need to draw a linkage between security and economic relations as they impact each other, observing that the two can improve in tandem, the Foreign Minister said.

Obama said he was alive to Islamabad’s economic priorities and its emphatic calls for greater market access to the United States and the European Union. The American leader said his administration “wants to give importance to the Reconstruction Opportunity Zones initiative in the interest of bringing economic development to areas affected by terrorism”.