WASHINGTON — Pakistan’s top diplomat on Wednesday urged the Trump administration’s new envoy for reconciliation in neighboring Afghanistan to be more sensitive to Pakistani opinion than he has been as a private citizen.
The recent appointment of veteran U.S. diplomat Zalmay Khalilzad has raised hackles in Pakistan. Khalilzad, a former ambassador to Afghanistan, has previously called on the U.S. to declare Pakistan a terrorist state unless it stops harboring insurgents.
Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said that there’s been a negative reaction in the Pakistani press to the appointment because Khalilzad “has made statements in the past which have not been, to be put it mildly, very friendly to Pakistan.”
“He’s been given a new role, and I hope, I would urge him to be more sensitive to opinion in Pakistan,” Qureshi told the U.S. Institute of Peace, a Washington think tank. “Obviously as individuals we can say what we want, but once you have an official position you have to be more restrained and you have to be more sensitive, because only (then) can you be an honest broker.”
