Pakistan PM’s special assistant to hold talks with team Trump

WASHINGTON: Pakistan has decided to send the Prime Minister’s special assistant for foreign affairs to the US to meet officials of the Trump transition team.

“Besides meeting members of the transition team, Tariq Fatemi, the special assistant, will meet officials of the outgoing Obama administration,” said Pakistan’s Ambassador Jalil Abbas Jilani.

President-elect Donald Trump is scheduled to take the oath on January 20 but he has already set up a provisional team, encouraging foreign leaders and officials to visit his headquarters in New York for familiarisation meetings.

Fatemi, who is coming on a twoweek official visit, is also expected to meet some members of this team in Washington. “He will also meet new US lawmakers elected last month,” Jilani told a news briefing at the embassy.

“This is a very important visit as much has happened in Washington since the November 8 elections,” Jilani said. The visit follows a telephone conversation between Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Trump on Wednesday during which the US leader expressed his desire to continue a productive relationship with Pakistan.

The Trump-Sharif conversation has generated much interest in the US capital where the opposition Democrats and the media were both criticising the president-elect for “talking to foreign leaders...without consulting US officials”.