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CHICAGO - US PRESIDENT-elect Barack Obama on Friday spoke by telephone with leaders of six US allies including Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari to thank them for their messages of congratulation, an aide said.
'This afternoon President-elect Obama returned calls to several leaders who earlier in the week had expressed congratulations on his election,' a member of Mr Obama's transition team said in a statement.
They included President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, President Lech Kaczynski and Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Poland, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero of Spain.
He also had a 'long, cordial' telephone conversation with Italy's Silvio Berlusconi, according to the prime minister's office, as controversy swirled over remarks by the Italian leader about the US president-elect.
The gaffe-prone Berlusconi on Thursday described the African-American president-elect as 'young, handsome and even tanned' and warned that many awaited him practically as a 'messiah'. He then refused to apologise.
Mr Obama has been inundated with foreign plaudits after triumphing over Republican John McCain to be elected the nation's first black president on Tuesday, with even US foes such as Iran and Cuba offering praise.
On Thursday he spoke by phone with the leaders of Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Israel, Japan, Mexico and South Korea.
The 47-year-old future commander-in-chief spoke with Pakistan's president on Friday in the midst of strained relations between the two war-on-terror allies over a series of deadly missile strikes in Pakistan's tribal regions on the Afghan border.
On Monday, Mr Zardari warned the new US commander for Iraq and Afghanistan, General David Petraeus, that the attacks were 'counterproductive'. -- AFP
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