Asking the south Asian neighbours to avoid a 'zero-sum mentality', the United States has said that Pakistan has to have a constructive relationship with India.

"Does Afghanistan need to have a constructive relationship with Pakistan? It does. Does Pakistan have to have a constructive relationship with India? It does," State Department spokesman P J Crowley said.

"Do all these countries need to avoid a zero-sum mentality that a gain on one side is necessarily a detriment on the other? We think that to the extent that these countries can work more effectively together, that will ultimately help reduce the threat of terrorism to any one of them," he said.

Crowley was responding to recent media reports that Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence no longer considers India as its top threat, but considers internal terrorism as its main threat.

"These are individual judgments made country by country. We have certainly encouraged countries in the region to work collectively together because they confront a shared threat, and we think some of these challenges can only be resolved through effective and coordinated action across the region," Crowley said.