WASHINGTON (Agencies) - Top US and Pakistani military officials have met to discuss strategies to contain the growing militant threat along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen said Thursday. The US Admiral said that he came away from the meeting encouraged that Pakistanis were focused on the problem of militants using the country as a safe haven. But he indicated that he thought Islamabad or Washington could do a better job against the growing threat. Mullen, who led the US side to the talks this week, also said that Pakistan army Chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani had stepped up operations to flush out Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants using the border area as a staging point for attacks in Afghanistan. "We certainly talked about the complexity of the challenges that we have in the border area, the pressure that we believe needs to be applied there for lots of reasons, not the least of which is the effect it's having on the fight in Afghanistan," Mullen told a Pentagon briefing, saying that Gen Kayani had been moving in the right direction. "Clearly, he's got a challenge," he said. The meeting of the top military brass, including US General David Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq who is set to be the senior military officer in the Middle East, was reportedly held on a US aircraft carrier in the Indian Ocean on Tuesday. Mullen told a Pentagon Press conference that this time he also brought Gen David Petraeus and Adm Eric T Olson, head of the Special Operations Command, and Lt-Gen Martin E Dempsey, acting commander of American forces in the Middle East. Also present was Gen David McKiernan, Nato's commander in Afghanistan and Rear-Admiral Michael LeFever, American military liaison in Pakistan. The meeting aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln was the latest of several between Adm Mike Mullen and Gen Kayani. There was "a very clear need from a US standpoint and from the Pakistani standpoint that we have got to figure out a way to get at this problem," Mullen said, in an indication that fresh strategies could be drawn up to combat the rising militancy threat. General Kayani "is undertaking operations that were not ongoing a few months ago," Mullen said, cautioning that it could take some time to bring the problem under control. "I am encouraged that he's taking action and I also think it's going to take some time," he said. "Expectations for instantaneous results are probably a little bit too high." A US official familiar with the discussion at Tuesday's meeting was "more collaborative", compared to a similar meeting a month ago when Mullen took a "more firm tone" in warning Gen Kayani that Islamabad was not doing enough to counter militants waging cross-border attacks in Afghanistan. Pakistani Army spokesman Maj-Gen Athar Abbas said the commanders analysed the security situation in the region and that no new agreements were struck. "They are doing more and becoming more effective," one US defence official said privately of the effort. "But there is still a long way to go" in the tribal areas. The second US official said Pakistanis needed to launch a "more concentrated effort."