A deep partnership

The Cabinet Ministers of the new British coalition government are queuing up to come to Pakistan. In the past three weeks I have hosted both our new International Development Minister, Andrew Mitchell, and our new Foreign Minister, William Hague.

It makes sense. Pakistan is already Britain’s second largest development programme and this is quite likely to grow. Pakistan is already a top British foreign policy priority and it is likely to become even more so.

Ministers want to set the relationship in a longer-term, broader framework in which we pay more attention to things like trade and investment, education, people-to-people contacts, culture and not just the immediate issues like Afghanistan and countering terrorism, important though these are. They want us to focus on using all Britain’s links with Pakistan in order to make even more of a positive difference here. They understand the complexity of the challenges that Pakistan faces and that we face together. But they also see the opportunities and believe that what is good for Pakistan will be good for Britain. The two countries know that they can’t walk away from each other – they are linked in too many ways.

All this came together vividly last week when William Hague visited Karachi. In the board room of the Karachi Stock Exchange he met the go-ahead, professional, forward thinking financial community. There was an exciting sense that Britain and the financial community can and should do business together. And then the Pakistan Business Council very kindly gave him lunch in the tallest building in Karachi. The CEOs of perhaps 10% of Pakistan’s economy were there. They are "battle-hardened", open for business and keen to support ambitious change. Looking out over Karachi – the world’s largest Muslim city, restless, energetic, stretched and sometimes violent, a tenth of Pakistan’s population, 30% of its economy, 90% of its financial liquidity – we could see the challenges but also a wealth of opportunity for Pakistan and for Britain’s relations with Pakistan.

We could see how a thickening of our wider relationships in Karachi and across the country could help us make more of a positive difference to even the most difficult problems in ways that would be good for Pakistan and good for Britain.

So now, to work.