Pakistan and Sri Lanka enjoy excellent defence ties, that now need to be expanded into other areas of bilateral cooperation, a senior Pakistani General said today.

Visiting Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staffs Committee of Pakistan, General Rashad Mahmood, made the remarks during his meeting with Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

Pakistan was a key Sri Lanka government ally when the Rajapaksa government took on the LTTE in the final battle in 2009.

Rajapaksa's office said Mahmood had praised Sri Lanka's post-conflict development in the battle-torn areas where the LTTE's armed campaign for separate Tamil homeland left a trail of destruction.

"Your achievements have been very substantive on that," Mahmood told Rajapaksa.

Mahmood stressed that the military cooperation between Sri Lanka and Pakistan now needs to be extended into other areas of cooperation.

Pakistan had last month came out strongly in defence of Sri Lanka when the UN Human Rights Council vote on the US-moved resolution was held in Geneva.

The Pakistani representative even moved a 'no action motion' on the resolution disputing the ability of the UN rights body to find the finances required to carry out an international investigation into Sri Lanka's alleged human rights abuses.

The motion, however, was convincingly defeated. Pakistan was one of the 12 countries voted in favour of Sri Lanka when India abstained.