Pakistan Embassy in US launches forum for public diplomacy on national interests

WASHINGTON: The Pakistan embassy in Washington has launched a major diplomacy initiative to provide avenues of engagement on public policy matters to counter negative portrayal of Pakistan through a sustained engagement with experts and policymakers.

The initiative, named Pakistan Embassy Forum, held its inaugural session on Wednesday that deliberated upon the energy situation in Pakistan. The session was attended by participants from think-tanks, academia, US government departments, the World Bank, the IMF, private sector energy companies and notables of Pakistani-American diaspora.

The initiative is part of the embassy’s efforts to enhance people-to-people ties between Pakistan and the United States as agreed between the leadership of the two countries at the highest level.

Pakistan embassy plans to host the next session of the Forum in January 2017.  At the opening session, Ziad Alahdad, a leading energy expert and a former director of the World Bank, and Shahid Javed Burki, the eminent economist who is currently associated with the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington DC, led the discussion.

Ziad Alahdad presented a paper highlighting various dimensions of Pakistan’s energy sector and its challenges. In his opening remarks, Ambassador Jalil Abbas Jilani described the objective of the establishment of the Forum.

He said instead of a defensive or reactive approach, the embassy was adopting a proactive approach to provide avenues of engagement on public policy matters in the national and regional context.

He expressed the hope that the debates held under the Forum would help counter negative portrayal of Pakistan in the public domain through sustained engagement with experts and policy community.

Ambassador Jilani noted that the Embassy Forum would build up a resource base in the form of pools of experts to project and promote our policies in a positive light. It also expected to expand the circle of friends of Pakistan by adopting an inclusive approach through listening to sane voices and blunting the negative stream of information.

Through this initiative the embassy intends to institutionalize linkages between experts, academicians and scholars in Pakistan and the US, he added.  The embassy plans to host a series of events under the umbrella of Pakistan Embassy Forum on different issues including economy, health, education, water, extremism etc. in which experts from the United States and Pakistan would be invited to participate.

The initiative would help initiate and sustain a Pakistan-specific positive discourse in the United States. It is also geared to conveying and building Pakistan’s image as a country open to debate and constructive engagement on issues of interest and import. The participants of the Forum took keen interest in the discussion and appreciated the embassy’s openness to debate that highlighted the transparency in governance policies.