WASHINGTON (APP) - US Senator Kit Bond, Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has urged President-elect Barack Obama to appoint a special coordinator tasked with improving counter-terrorism efforts in the Pak-Afghan border region and alleviating Islamabad's concerns on Indian influence in Afghanistan. Bond, who along with Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Senator John Kerry, recently returned from a weeklong trip to South Asia, has recommended that the new president must appoint a Washington-based Special Coordinator for all US government efforts in the region. The US govt must dramatically increase our engagement with Pakistan with an eye toward meeting US and Pakistani goals for the region, he emphasised. The Republican lawmaker said uprooting terrorists along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region and stabilising Afghanistan requires a Special Coordinator with the clout and authority backed by the President. "As part of the engagement process, the next administration should begin an intensive diplomatic effort to develop solutions to conflicts between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Former US Ambassador to Afghanistan Ronald Neuman recommends that the USG work to encourage Afghanistan and Pakistan to agree that the current frontier will not be modified without the consent of both govts and their people." "As part of this effort, the special coordinator should look for ways to alleviate Pakistan's concerns about India's influence in Afghanistan," he recommends in a 13-page report for the Obama Administration that takes charge on January 20. Bond calls for rejecting the "go it alone" philosophy, of which some believe they see evidence due to increasing US cross-border attacks into the federally administered tribal areas. The US had considerable leeway and international support in the early years of Operation Enduring Freedom in terms of such actions but now seven years into the conflict, and facing a much different international situation, the US cannot afford to push the Pakistani and international opinion to the brink with ever-increasing cross-border incursions. Pakistan controls the US only viable supply line into Afghanistan and its parliament recently expressed strong disapproval of such US actions in their sovereign territory, he notes. He said frequent unilateral actions are not worth the strategic loss in overall Pakistani and world opinion. The US cross-border incursions should be reserved for only the top high-value targets, he stresses. "The USG (US govt) must develop and coalesce around a comprehensive strategy designed to meet a set of clearly defined goals for the Afghanistan-Pakistan region. True to basic counterinsurgency (COIN) principles, the strategy needs to be regional in breadth, locally tailored and adhered to by all USG elements in-theatre," he says in a critical assessment of the coalition efforts made so far.