It is hard for President Bush to be friendly with the Afghan and Pakistani presidents at the same time, given the clash of interests between them. It will be much easier for him to fall out with both of them, as US frustration with their policies grows.

Yesterday’s summit between the US leader and President Karzai of Afghanistan at Camp David was not one that Bush appeared to enjoy. With Iraq at the top of national attention, and with the Democrat-controlled Congress doing its best to keep it there, the last thing he can have wanted was to have been reminded of the other war that is going badly - one which, critics say, has suffered so much from his preoccupation with Saddam Hussein.

Afghanistan has gone through one of its worst months of turmoil since the US-led invasion of late 2001: kidnappings, roadside bombings, the opium poppy harvest at record levels, and a resurgence of the Taleban. That is not to mention the persistent elusiveness of Osama bin Laden, thought to be in the shelter of sympathisers on the Afghan-Pakistan border.

Bush and Karzai, standing on the Camp David lawns, briskly admitted those setbacks while insisting that, in Bush’s words, “progress is being made”. It is progress, certainly, that Karzai is meeting President Musharraf of Pakistan in the coming week, in Kabul, the Afghan capital, to talk about the lawlessness of the border, the main issue that set them at odds in the past couple of years.

Karzai has blamed Musharraf for tolerating the Taleban, even helping them. Like the US, he has criticised Musharraf’s deal last autumn that handed responsibility for the hunt for militants to tribal leaders in the border territories, who are Pashtun, like the Taleban, and often have close family ties with them.

Pakistan officials retort that they are given no credit either for the loss of more than 700 soldiers (their figure) in the border fighting or for the steady capture of senior Taleban and al-Qaeda figures, which they do not want to publicise for fear of a backlash from sympathisers. They add that Karzai refuses to acknowledge his own part in allowing Afghanistan’s problems to swell, and tries to blame everything on his neighbour to the east.

Both accusations are right, unfortunately for US policy. Karzai is entirely justified in blaming Musharraf for the failure of a deal that looked like a bad idea from the start. Musharraf has a point in arguing that he had to strike the deal because the army couldn’t stand the casualties. He has an even better one in claiming that Karzai’s Government is barely worth the name, has little control over the provinces, and has stayed in power only by striking deals with unpleasant provincial governors or chiefs.

But that is an accusation that Karzai might throw back, word for word, at Musharraf. The Pakistani President will survive the next presidential “election” by parliament on September 15 - there is no other candidate - but is still wrangling with Benazir Bhutto, the leader of the main opposition party, about whether she will back him for another five-year-term after the next parliamentary elections (which have slipped back until at least January). That follows the unravelling of deals with religious parties who (as was easily predicted) disliked his liberal agenda and pursuit of the Taleban.

Afghanistan is a failed state topped by an elected leader backed by the US; Pakistan is within sight of being the same. Either president is bound to cling to power by searching for deals with extreme groups which might otherwise topple him. Both “allies” will frustrate the US, even if it backs away from its hopes that they will deliver democracy, and asks them simply to hand over bin Laden.

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