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ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) ― Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke at length late Wednesday with Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf as the key U.S. anti-terrorism ally weighed imposing a state of emergency due to security concerns in the nuclear-armed nation.

Rice spoke by phone to Musharraf in a call that took place in the early hours of Thursday in Pakistan where officials said an emergency declaration was being considered and that the president would soon meet with his cabinet to discuss the option, a senior State Department official said.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the situation, refused to discuss the substance of the 17-minute conversation that began shortly after 2 a.m. Thursday Pakistan time.

The call came after Pakistan's minister of state for information said Islamabad might impose a state of emergency due to "external and internal threats" and deteriorating law and order in the volatile northwest near the border with Afghanistan. A Musharraf aide said the president would meet his cabinet later Thursday.

Pakistani television networks reported that a declaration of an emergency was imminent, although senior officials said no final decision had been made.

Musharraf is under growing U.S. pressure to crack down on militants at the Afghan border because of fears that al-Qaida has regrouped there and the matter has spilled over into the campaign for the 2008 U.S. presidential elections.

But some believe the possible step may be tied to domestic politics as Musharraf's popularity has dwindled and his standing has been badly shaken by a failed bid to oust the country's chief justice -- an independent-minded judge likely to rule on expected legal challenges to the president's bid to seek a new five-year presidential term this fall.

Earlier, Musharraf abruptly canceled his planned attendance at the Thursday opening of a peace meeting in Afghanistan that is to bring more than 600 Pakistani and Afghan tribal leaders together with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who had been touting the gathering as a sign of progress earlier this week.

Rice's call to Musharraf followed comments by State Department spokesman Sean McCormack who said the U.S. understood Musharraf's abrupt decision to skip the meeting.

"President Musharraf certainly wouldn't stay back in Islamabad if he didn't believe he had good and compelling reasons to stay back," McCormack told a regular briefing. "Certainly we would understand that."

Just hours before those remarks, McCormack had told reporters the United States hoped Musharraf would be able to attend at least some of the meeting, if not the opening, and that U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Anne Patterson had been in touch with Pakistani officials to determine how Islamabad would be represented.

The Bush administration, which had brokered the meeting, was initially surprised by Musharraf's cancellation, particularly after Karzai repeatedly expressed satisfaction about the meeting at a joint news conference with Bush on Monday at the Camp David, Md., presidential retreat.

The idea for the peace meeting was hatched in September 2006 during a meeting between Bush, Karzai and Musharraf in Washington as a way to stem rising cross-border violence.

But the four days of talks are already being boycotted by delegates from Pakistan's restive South and North Waziristan regions amid fear of Taliban reprisals.

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who met with Musharraf on Tuesday, defended Pakistan's efforts to battle al-Qaida along the Afghan border in a conference call with reporters on Wednesday.

"It would be a mistake to conclude that they are not making the effort. I believe they have," Durbin said, citing the deaths of 600 Pakistani soldiers. "I just believe they can be more effective in the way they're doing it."

Durbin, the Senate's second-ranking Democrat, said Musharraf did not talk about Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., the presidential candidate who has been criticized by Pakistan's government for suggesting he was prepared to send U.S. military forces into Pakistan to hunt down terrorists if Musharraf doesn't act.

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