On Thursday, I visited the Police Lines headquarters in Islamabad. I was accompanying the UK Foreign Secretary, William Hague, who wanted to pay his respects to the fallen martyrs of the Pakistani police service and to publicly recognise their sacrifices in serving Pakistan and its citizens.
Mr Hague laid a wreath at the police monument and [...]
This month sees not only Her Majesty The Queen’s 85th Birthday but also the wedding of His Royal Highness Prince William of Wales and Miss Catherine Middleton.
These two happy events mark the start of a tremendously exciting period for the UK and the Commonwealth, which the world will be watching and celebrating with us. 2012 [...]
This was another sad week for Pakistan. On Wednesday morning, I was telling journalists about a doubling of the UK’s aid to Pakistan, when I was horrified to hear that Minorities Minister Shahbaz Bhatti had been shot and killed in broad daylight in Islamabad.
As I said that day, his death is a loss to Pakistan [...]
Six months ago Pakistan was hit by devastating monsoon floods. This was - and remains – a disaster shocking in its scale and impact. The world risks forgetting that 20 million people were affected – more than the Boxing Day Asian tsunami, Hurricane Katrina and the Pakistan and Haiti earthquakes combined. Almost two thousand people [...]
Whatever else Pakistanis may think about India, the evidence of economic growth there is hard to deny. Last week I visted Gurgaon, the new city outside New Delhi. It is mushrooming. Twelve years ago, when I last took a look, it practically wasn’t there. Now it has all the shopping malls, office blocks and building [...]
