U.S. Vice President-elect Joe Biden held talks in Pakistan as part of a regional tour expected to focus on terrorism and tensions between Pakistan and India following the Mumbai attacks.

Before he left the United States, Biden, travelling in his capacity as outgoing chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told reporters that “What I hope to accomplish is to get sort of a baseline. This will be my God knows how many trips, I guess my 10th or 11th trip into Iraq and I don’t know how many times in Afghanistan and Pakistan,” Politico quoted him as saying.

Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper said on its website that President Asif Ali Zardari “apprised Biden of Pakistan’s commitment and the measures being taken by the government in the war against militancy, extremism and terrorism”.  Biden in turn described Pakistan as “an incredibly valued U.S. ally”, according to the Associated Press of Pakistan.

But what about those attacks by U.S. Predator drones on targets on Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan which have fuelled anti-American anger and been condemned by Islamabad as a violation of its sovereignty? President-elect Barack Obama has been a strong advocate of unilateral U.S. attacks, saying during his election campaign that “If we have actionable intelligence about high-level al Qaeda targets in Pakistan’s border region, we must act if Pakistan will not or cannot.”

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Democrat Senator Joseph Biden, chosen by Barack Obama as his running mate, said famously early on that America needed to have a Pakistan policy, not a Musharraf policy.

“There’s a vast majority, a significant middle of the population of Pakistan (that) is democratic and middle-class. But what’s happening is, absent free elections, you’re forcing them underground, radicalizing them, and you’re giving great sway to that portion of the population that’s already radicalized,” he was quoted as saying.

In a post of his own on The Huffington Post last November, Biden condemned the imposition of emergency rule by then President Pervez Mushrraf and described Pakistan as  ”probably the most dangerous and complex country we deal with”.

With Musharraf gone this week and a fractious but democratically elected civilian government in place in Islamabad, Biden may now get a chance to shape the next administration’s Pakistan policy. The chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee clearly brings the foreign policy expertise which would be needed by a future Obama administration in its relations with Pakistan.

“Arguably, the most dangerous waters to be waded through internationally in the next few years will be the tribal areas of Pakistan and its border with Afghanistan. There is probably no one in the Senate who knows more about these issues than Biden,” the blog sepiamutiny wrote.

An Obama-Biden ticket would bring together two individuals with a strong track record of supporting democracy and development in Pakistan, The Pakistan Policy Blog said, adding that both have consistently argued that Pakistan’s democratization and cooperation in the tackling al Qaeda and the Taliban are interconnected.

It also means that the vice president’s office will play an active role, if not dominant role in shaping U.S. policy on Pakistan. A bill that Biden has authored on tripling non-military assistance to Pakistan will likely get momentum and could be an early foreign policy success for a young administration.

In short, a positive sign in the gloom that pervades the region at this time?