ISLAMABAD: Foreign Office on Tuesday said that the agreement of Pakistan’s ambassador-designate to Washington Sardar Masood Khan “is being processed in the US system and rubbished the media reports about the ‘unusual’ long delay in official approval of his ambassadorial assignment as part of ‘wider Indian propaganda’.”

Reacting to the media reports carried by Indian media on government of Pakistan’s decision to appoint Sardar Masood Khan as Pakistan’s Ambassador to the US, Foreign Office spokesperson Asim Iftikhar Ahmad said: “This is 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 spokesperson further noted that Ambassador Khan is a highly accomplished diplomat with 40 years of experience in both multilateral and bilateral diplomacy. “His agreement is being processed in the US system,” he added.

Earlier, Indian media reports also carried by a section of Pakistani media claimed that the State Department has been taking “unusually long” to process the agreement of Ambassador Khan, allegedly “triggering” an impression of a “pause” in the process, which they claimed take normally four to six weeks to issue agreement for Pakistani ambassadors in the past.

Masood Khan, a former president of Azad Jammu and Kashmir from August 2016 to August 2021, was nominated as the new envoy in Washington by the incumbent Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government in November 2021. Since then, the process of approval of his agreement is pending with the US State Department.

Before serving as the AJK president during former Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) government, Ambassador Khan, a career diplomat, remained in various diplomatic positions at the Pakistan missions, including in Beijing, The Hague, and Washington DC.

He remained as Pakistan’s Ambassador to China between September 2008 and September 2012 and as Pakistan’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, New York, between October 11, 2012 and February 7, 2015. He also remained a spokesperson for the Foreign Office.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022