Britain’s Prince William said that the UK and Pakistan share “unique bonds” in a speech at the country’s national monument in Islamabad on Tuesday night, during a five-day visit with his wife, Kate.
William spoke of the warm welcome and delicious food they had experienced in Pakistan after arriving on Monday night and visiting school children and Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan.
“The UK and Pakistan share unique bonds and so it will always be in our best interests for you to succeed,” William said at the event hosted by the British High Commission, adding that 1.5 million people living in the UK had Pakistani heritage and the UK was one of Pakistan’s top investors.
Photo: AP
“You can rely on us to keep playing an important role as a key partner and your friend,” he said.
Foreign policy experts and officials have said the trip, the first by a British royal family member in more than a decade and made at the request of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, represented a soft power push, which might help both sides further their diplomatic aims.
It comes as Britain seeks to reinvigorate its foreign relationships as the deadline looms for its departure from the EU, while Pakistan works to repair its global image to boost tourism and investment.
William also mentioned the looming challenge of climate change to Pakistan, as well as the importance of women having access to education, two themes of a trip that has been described by palace officials as the most complex the couple have undertaken due to security issues.
Earlier in the day the couple met Khan, a former international cricket star who the prince played cricket with in London as a child, at his official residence.
William’s mother, Diana, a hugely popular figure in Pakistan, visited Pakistan several times in the 1990s and helped Khan raise money for a cancer hospital.
“While welcoming the royal couple, Prime Minister Imran Khan recalled the love and affection among the people of Pakistan for Princess Diana, because of her compassion as well as commitment to support charitable causes,” Khan’s office said in a statement.
He also brought up geopolitical issues such as India’s decision to revoke the autonomy of its portion of the disputed region of Kashmir in August and attempts to secure peace in Afghanistan.
Earlier William and Kate met students at an Islamabad Model College for Girls, discussing education with a group of older students and visiting the classrooms of younger students to admire their drawings.
While visiting the school a 14-year-old student told William she and other students were “big fans” of Diana, who died in a car crash in 1997.
“Oh that’s very sweet of you. I was a big fan of my mother too,” he said.
They then visited the Margalla Hills National Park on the edge of Islamabad, which is under threat from poaching, wildfires, invasive species and littering.
William and Kate yesterday morning flew to Chitral, as they headed to Pakistan’s northern mountains and glaciers to draw attention to the challenges of climate change in the nation.
They were to view a melting glacier and meet with local communities faced with the impact of a damaged environment.
The couple’s visit concludes tomorrow.
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to
The number of people in Japan aged 100 or older has hit a record high of more than 95,000, almost 90 percent of whom are women, government data showed yesterday. The figures further highlight the slow-burning demographic crisis gripping the world’s fourth-biggest economy as its population ages and shrinks. As of Sept. 1, Japan had 95,119 centenarians, up 2,980 year-on-year, with 83,958 of them women and 11,161 men, the Japanese Ministry of Health said in a statement. On Sunday, separate government data showed that the number of over-65s has hit a record high of 36.25 million, accounting for 29.3 percent of