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| Jehangir Karamat |
Islamabad, Sept. 23 (PTI): Pakistan has appointed former army chief General Jehangir Karamat as its ambassador to the US to replace Ashraf Jehangir Qazi, who is the UN special envoy in Iraq.
The appointment of General Karamat, who was the chief of army from 1996 to 1998, has been approved by the US, the state-run media said here today quoting official sources.
Karamat, who had quit his post as army chief after differences with the then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, was succeeded by Pervez Musharraf who eventually seized power from Sharif in a bloodless coup in 1999.
Karamat was also involved in diplomatic exchanges between India and Pakistan. He is also a visiting fellow at Stanford University in Stanford, California, and the Washington-based Brookings Institution. Karamat was also part of a UN-sponsored study on Afghanistan and is the chairman of the Policy Research Institute?s board of governors in Islamabad.
Karamat is currently in New York to attend the UN General Assembly session as part of an official delegation accompanying Musharraf.
Qazi had resigned in July after his appointment as the UN secretary general Kofi Annan?s special representative in Iraq.
Militants charged
Ten members of a shadowy Islamic militant group linked to al Qaida were formally charged today with trying to assassinate the military commander of the southern Pakistani city of Karachi earlier this year.
Lieutenant-General Ahsan Saleem Hayat survived the June 10 gun and bomb attack on his motorcade on Karachi?s busy Clifton bridge, but 10 other people ? six soldiers, three policemen and a civilian ? were killed.