Tillerson’s arrival in Pakistan was low-key and heavily secured; he landed at a military airbase in nearby Rawalpindi city at midafternoon with little official protocol or fanfare, and his only visits were to the US embassy and the prime minister’s office in Islamabad. Traffic was blocked across the capital during the official convoy’s movements.

Pakistan’s Senate chairman, Raza Rabbani, said Tuesday that Tillerson’s threatening message the day before “seems like that of a viceroy’s before they visit a country.”

Abbasi, though, appeared eager to assure Tillerson he had heard the message, telling him when they met Tuesday that Pakistan’s government is committed to the war against terrorism. “We have produced results,” he said. “And we are looking forward to moving ahead with the US and building a tremendous relationship.”

Despite the largely cordial tone of their opening remarks, followed by several hours of private talks in the prime minister’s office before Tillerson flew to India for a longer stay, the enormous gap between American and Pakistani concerns and priorities has been evident in comments made by numerous Pakistani officials and opinion makers in the past week.

The Trump administration has focused strictly on the demand for more Pakistani cooperation in curbing terrorism and in ending the 16-year conflict in next-door Afghanistan. Many Afghans view Pakistan – which once backed the Taliban regime in Kabul – as a source of violent Islamist militancy and a permanent threat to their country’s stability.

Pakistanis, on the other hand, are far more worried about the threat from India, its larger rival and neighbour to the west, which is led by a Hindu nationalist government. The two countries have fought four limited wars. Both claim the Himalayan border region of Kashmir, and Pakistan has repeatedly accused Indian troops of abusing protesters in the Indian-controlled portion.

Pakistani officials said they intended to raise the issue of India forcefully Tuesday, especially President Donald Trump’s overture to New Delhi to become more deeply involved in developing Afghanistan. That gesture has been viewed here as a direct US rebuke to Pakistan and an invitation to India to jointly dominate the conflicted region.

“Our job will be to show Tillerson that he is mistaken in thinking that the US can ever defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan by relying only on India,” the editors of the News International newspaper wrote Tuesday. “Pakistan is still needed to negotiate a political end to the war,” they wrote, but adding that Washington is “looking for scapegoats” to blame for its failures in Afghanistan.

Pakistani Defence Minister Khurram Dastgir, who took part in the talks with Tillerson, told a television news show Tuesday night that “we told him the threat of India is very real” and that Pakistan wants “mutual respect and cooperation,” not economic aid, from Washington.

Dastgir said a single meeting was held with Tillerson, including senior civilian and military officials, “to give a united message” to Washington. Pakistan’s military establishment cooperates with US intelligence agencies on terrorism issues but has bristled at suggestions from civilian leaders that it would allow US troops to operate in Pakistan.

Defence Secretary Jim Mattis is due to visit Pakistan soon and is expected to reinforce Tillerson’s demands; he has told Congress several times that Pakistan is still sheltering the Haqqani network despite its denials. There has been no specific description of likely sanctions on Pakistan if administration officials decide they are not satisfied.

Ever since Trump accused Pakistan in August of harbouring “agents of chaos,” officials here have made numerous efforts to restore American goodwill. Last week, Pakistan’s military unexpectedly announced that its troops had rescued an American woman, her Canadian husband and their three children after five years in Taliban captivity, based on a US intelligence tip. Trump hailed the release as a “positive moment” in the strained relationship.

But observers in both countries doubt such efforts will do much to resolve the larger tension between the former cold war allies, which now fear different enemies and seek contradictory solutions to regional conflict. Any smaller signs of cooperation, wrote columnist Huma Yusuf in the Dawn newspaper this week, are only “the piecemeal politics of placation.”

“Washington has now effectively read Pakistan the Riot Act,” said Michael Kugelman, a Pakistan expert at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars in Washington. If the Trump administration decides to take drastic measures, the relationship could “plunge into deep crisis,” he said. For the moment there is a “modest thaw,” as indicated by Tillerson’s visit, Kugelman said, but he added that US-Pakistan relations will soon be “put to the test in a big way.”