Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban militia has snubbed a demand by Pakistan to surrender prime suspect Osama bin Laden and instead left his fate in the hands of a council of Islamic clerics. Since this council consists of the type of clerics who have perverted a noble and peaceful religion, the verdict is preordained.

The Pakistani delegation returns home from its mission to Kabul in failure, but the fact that the mission took place at all is a significant success for American diplomacy. A global coalition against terrorism cannot be created solely with long-time allies and warming Cold War foes, but must include Arab states with which the United States has had spotty relations.

No nation has been spottier than Pakistan. Without oil deposits on which to build a common economic interest, the secretive, impoverished Islamic state ruled by a military dictatorship and the open, affluent democracy had, until last week, nothing in common.

Yet within days of the terrorist attacks, the government of Gen. Pervez Musharraf agreed to a list if U.S. demands presented by Secretary of State Colin Powell, including permission for U.S. aircraft to attack Afghanistan through Pakistani airspace and to use Pakistani airfields. It is particularly significant that this agreement referred to U.S., not just U.N., aircraft. It is also significant that this agreement, which drew threats of retaliation by the Taliban and sparked angry street demonstrations in Pakistani streets by tens of thousands of Taliban supporters, was followed not by Pakistan hedging on its commitment, but by the difficult and dangerous mission onto the Taliban’s home turf. Gen. Musharraf’s televised address to his nation Wednesday reaffirmed this agreement, underscoring the importance of Pakistan behaving as a responsible member of the community of nations.

Certainly, with the United States about to lead the developed nations of the world into an all-out war against terrorists and the states that harbor them, Pakistan’s cooperation seems the obvious choice when the options are self-preservation and destruction. But while that all-out war may be months away, the threat from the Taliban is immediate. The government of Pakistan has not, in the sense of meeting the needs of its desperately poor people or of improving relations with arch-enemy India, been a good government. It is, however, courageous.

The United States has good reasons to pursue this improved relationship with Pakistan. The other routes into Afghanistan – hostile Iran and utterly unreliable former Soviet republics -are unlikely allies. Pakistan’s intelligence services know the terrain in a region in which terrain is a formidable weapon. Pakistan is a nuclear-armed nation with a population of 140 million – it cannot be allowed to fall into the hands of terrorists posing as Islamic clerics.

Pakistan has taken a stand; the challenge to the United States now is to help hold it up. Increased financial assistance is important, so, too, is patience and candor. If the Pakistani people are to be convinced that military action against terrorism is not a war on Islam, the Pakistani government must be given time to follow all avenues of diplomacy and the U.S. must provide that government with judicious but adequate evidence that bin Laden is among those responsible for the attacks. This is a remarkable change for two nations that, until now, had little in common, but these are remarkable times.