US Secretary of State Colin Powell's trip to Islamabad soon after 9/11 was a defining moment, it cemented Pakistan's U-turn from its mind-boggling decade-old support for the Talibaan regime in Afghanistan and set us on a direct course to confront terrorism, some of which we had been accused of spawning. It has taken more than three and a half years of hard grind, mostly by Gen Pervez Musharraf alone, to contain the immense damage to our image, if not entirely reverse world perceptions. Condeeleza Rice's visit to Pakistan may neither be a defining moment or even a watershed in our on-off relationship with the US, it consolidates the maturity that the relationship has achieved.
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