By Paul Eckert, Asia Correspondent

WASHINGTON, Sept 28 (Reuters) - Afghanistan sees new chances to work with Pakistan to uproot militant sanctuaries on their shared border, President Hamid Karzai said in an interview broadcast on Sunday.

"With the current democratic government, we have the possibility to work together," he told CNN.

Pakistan's newly elected president, Asif Ali Zardari, widower of assassinated former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, "sees things the way we see it" because his family and country had suffered terrorist attacks, said Karzai.

Failure to deal with the border havens that al Qaeda and the Taliban use to launch attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and which may harbor Osama Bin Laden and other top militant leaders, would prolong war and suffering, he warned.

"If they are found in Afghanistan, we must do it in Afghanistan. If they are found in Pakistan we must do it there," Karzai said.

Karzai and Zardari's predecessor, military strongman Pervez Musharraf, often bickered over cross-border infiltration, and the inability of the U.S.-allied countries to cooperate was seen as hampering the fight against terrorism.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in an interview with Reuters on Friday, welcomed a "new spirit" between the leaders of Pakistan and Afghanistan and said it would help international efforts to stabilize the border region.

"They both speak very warmly of one another. They have some ideas about how to bring some political reconciliation of various tribals on both sides of the border and how to use this to bring greater stability," Rice said of the two leaders.

The United States became embroiled in cross-border tensions with Pakistan this month after U.S. incursions inside Pakistan that drew criticism from Islamabad.

On Thursday, U.S. and Pakistani ground forces exchanged fire across the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, and Islamabad and Washington clashed over whether American helicopters had entered Pakistan.

Zardari, in a separate interview on CNN aired on Sunday, described the United States as "friends of ours who sometimes get overindulgent."

He urged Washington to share intelligence so that Pakistan could go after militants, including bin Laden.

"If they do think that he's there, let them share the information with us and we'll get him," he said, adding that he has no idea where bin Laden was hiding. (Editing by Xavier Briand)

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