NEW YORK, Feb 7: A senior American military commander is expected to travel to Pakistan this month in what Obama administration officials say is the first step towards thawing a strategic relationship that has in effect remained frozen for more than two months, the New York Times reported on Tuesday.

Gen James N. Mattis, the head of the Central Military Command, will meet Chief of Army Staff Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani to discuss the investigation of an exchange of fire at the Afghan border that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers, as well as new border coordination procedures to prevent a recurrence of the incident, the newspaper said.

General Mattis’s visit, the first by a high-ranking American official since the cross-border confrontation in November, was to have begun on Thursday, but has been postponed by at least a week pending a debate in the Pakistani parliament over a new security policy towards the United States.

Pakistani and American officials are quietly optimistic that both events will trigger a chain of public engagement and private negotiations that will reboot the two nations’ frayed strategic relationship, although along more narrowly defined lines than before.

Pakistani officials say they will probably reopen Nato supply lines running through their territory.

The State Department is supporting a proposal circulating in the administration for the United States to issue a formal apology for the deaths of the Pakistani soldiers in the Nov 26 air strike by American gunships.

“We’ve felt an apology would be helpful in creating some space,” said an American official who has been briefed on the State Department’s view and who spoke on the condition of anonymity as internal discussions continued.

Soon after the lethal air strike, the White House decided that President Obama would not offer formal condolences to Pakistan, overruling State Department officials who argued for such a show of remorse to help salvage relations. Pentagon officials had balked, saying the statements from other American officials had been sufficient. Some administration aides said at the time that they worried that if Mr Obama decided to overrule the military and apologise to Pakistan, it could become ammunition for his Republican opponents in the presidential campaign.

A State Department spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland, would not comment on the proposal.

American election politics are also on the mind of Pakistani strategists. A senior security official in Islamabad said the military was cognizant of Mr Obama’s domestic political constraints, and noted that Pakistan might also have elections this year, probably in the autumn.

“Unfortunately there is election fever on both sides of the divide this year,” the official said. “That limits the room for manoeuvre.”The director of the State Department’s policy planning office, Jake Sullivan, signalled last month that relations could improve soon.

Speaking to foreign journalists in Washington on Jan 25, Mr. Sullivan said: “We will see over the course of the next several weeks an intensive period of work to deal with the very real issues that continue to exist between the United States and Pakistan in our relationship.”

American officials in Washington said the thaw had already started, unofficially. Relations between the CIA and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) had slowly improved since the nadir after the raid that killed Osama bin Laden last May, they said.