US Vice President Mike Pence on Wednesday lauded Pakistan's armed forces over safe recovery of a US-Canadian couple from the Taliban militants.

Pence, who telephoned Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, reaffirmed the importance of bilateral relations between the two countries.

Joshua Boyle and his American wife Caitlan Coleman were seized by the Taliban while hiking in Afghanistan in 2012, and then turned over to the group's affiliated militant Haqqani network in Pakistan.

The couple and their three children born in captivity were freed in a Pakistani military operation triggered by US intelligence and are now back in Canada.

Pakistan and the United States have for years been - at best - uneasy allies in the war against the Taliban and other Islamist extremists.

US President Donald Trump said the raid that rescued American Caitlan Coleman, her Canadian husband Joshua Boyle and their three young children showed that Pakistan had started to “respect the United States again” in response to his administration’s tough-talking tactics.