Pakistan hopes US will soon approve new envoy (Former Azad K President) Masood Khan’s nomination

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Pakistan hopes that the US Department of State will approve and return the agrément over the country’s new envoy for Washington in the next two or three weeks.

The agrément, in diplomatic parlance, is an agreement between two states to receive and facilitate members of a diplomatic mission. The Pak*istan embassy in Washington submitted Masood Khan’s agrément to the State Department in November and the host government usually takes two to three months to approve the papers.

“Mr Khan’s “agrément is under process and the State Department will approve and send it back soon, perhaps in the next two to three weeks,” an embassy official told Dawn.

Earlier this week, a Republican lawmaker, Congressman Scott Perry of Pennsylvania wrote a letter to President Joe Biden, urging him to reject the nomination of the new Pakistani envoy, Masood Khan.


In the letter, Mr Perry also claimed that the State Department had placed a “pause” on Pakistan’s request for approving Mr Khan’s nomination.

The State Department, however, refused to get involved in the controversy. “As a matter of standard diplomatic practice, we do not comment on the status of agrément requests from foreign governments,” a State Department spokesperson said when asked to confirm or deny Mr Perry’s claim.

“While I am encouraged that the State Department has reportedly placed a pause on approving Masood Khan as the new Ambassador from Pakistan, a pause is not enough. I urge you to reject any diplomatic credentials presented to you by Masood Khan and reject any effort by the government of Pakistan to install this ‘jihadist’ as Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States,” Mr Perry wrote.

The Pakistani embassy, however, rejected the allegations against Mr Khan as baseless, pointing out that this was “a part of the wider Indian disinformation campaign to malign Pakistan and those who represent Pakistan, by using fake news to make scandalous claims and baseless allegations”.

The official statement the embassy shared with the media pointed out that “Ambassador Masood Khan is a highly accomplished diplomat with 40 years of experience in both multilateral and bilateral diplomacy”.

Mr Khan joined the Foreign Service in 1980 and served as Pakistan’s ambassador to the United Nations and International Organisations in Geneva, to China and to the United Nations in New York before his retirement.

Mr Khan also served as the president of Azad Kashmir, a position that irked India.

The Pakistan Embassy noted that the report against Mr Khan was published in the Indian media only and the letter, although issued in the US, was distributed to Indian media outlets in New Delhi.

“Even Indian media representatives in Washington were ignored, perhaps because those who released the letter did not want them to contact American officials for clarification,” one of the officials said.

The officials also said that India launched a major campaign against Mr Khan’s nomination since it was first announced late last year.

A former Pakistani ambassador to Washington said that “a letter signed by only one congressman cannot persuade the administration to reject an ambassador’s nomination”.

Such an action, he said, “would require substantial evidence to show that Mr Khan’s appointment could hurt US interests”.

Published in Dawn, February 2nd, 2022

 

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ISLAMABAD: The United States has approved the appointment of Masood Khan as Pakistan’s next Ambassador to Washington, putting at rest speculations that Washington might reject credentials of the former president of Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK).

The agrément for Masood’s appointment was sent to the State Department in November last year. The delay in the approval stirred speculations that the US had reservations over his credentials.

What added to the rumours was a letter written by a US Congressman that surfaced earlier this week suggesting that the Biden administration had placed a “pause” on approving Masood as the new ambassador.

The Foreign Office had denied such reports, saying “agrément [of Masood] was being processed in the US system”.

On Saturday, the foreign office confirmed that the US government had conveyed its agrément to the appointment of Sardar Masood Khan as the Ambassador of Pakistan to the United States.

Also read: Pakistan insists US envoy’s appointment on track

“Ambassador Khan is a seasoned diplomat who has served Pakistan with distinction and honour,” Foreign office spokesperson Asim Iftikhar said. The ambassador-designate would assume his new responsibilities in Washington DC in due course of time, added the spokesperson.

Masood would replace Asad Majid, the current Pakistani envoy to Washington.

Speaking about Masood, Asim Iftikhar noted that he former AJK president “is a highly accomplished diplomat with 40 years of experience in both multilateral and bilateral diplomacy”.

After his retirement, Masood became the AJK president and has been advancing Pakistan’s case for the longstanding Kashmir dispute with India. Masood has vast experience in multilateral diplomacy and has been a frequent negotiator for Pakistan.

He has served in various diplomatic positions at the Pakistan missions in Beijing, The Hague, and Washington DC. Masood during his service served as the ambassador to China as well as a permanent representative to the United Nations. He also remained a spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

His appointment comes at a critical juncture when the relationship between Pakistan and the US is undergoing a transformation after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Pakistan has been seeking a broad-based engagement with the US covering not just security but economic and other areas but the Biden administration has yet to respond to Islamabad’s overtures.

But certain recent developments indicate that the US is not seeking complete disengagement from Pakistan. A US State Department spokesperson recently termed Pakistan as a strategic partner and denied the impression that Washington was putting pressure on Pakistan to either choose the US or China.

Despite the tense relationship, Pakistan was the number one recipient of US vaccine doses in the region. Similarly, the US has also appointed a full time ambassador to Pakistan for the first time since 2018.

But the future of relationship between the two countries is not certain since President Joe Biden has yet to speak to Prime Minister Imran Khan despite being in office for over a year. Also the deepening cooperation between India and the US is something that worries Pakistani policymakers.

https://tribune.com.pk/story/2342128/us-approves-masood-khans-appointment-as-new-pakistan-envoy