Pakistan PM Appoints New Ambassador to U.S.
Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani on Wednesday appointed lawmaker and former information minister Sherry Rehman as the country's new ambassador to the United States, an official said.
The appointment came just hours after Gilani asked envoy Husain Haqqani to resign as the government investigates claims that he sought U.S. help, allegedly at the president's behest, to limit the power of the Pakistani military.
A confidante of President Asif Ali Zardari, a lawmaker in his Pakistan People's Party and formerly Pakistan's first woman information minister, Rehman is considered one of the most liberal politicians in the country.
Her appointment was welcomed by rights activists and commentators as a sign that the civilian government had not completely relinquished U.S.-Pakistani relations to the military, widely perceived to have forced Haqqani's departure.
"The Prime Minister has appointed Sherry Rehman as Pakistan's ambassador to the U.S.," his press secretary Akram Shaheedi told Agence France Presse, adding that the two had met in Islamabad on Wednesday, without giving any further details.
Rehman was not immediately reachable for comment.
In late 2010, she sparked fury among the conservative religious right by lodging a private member's bill seeking to abolish the death penalty for blasphemy after a Christian mother was sentenced to death.
At one time she was largely confined to her home in the southern city of Karachi, her own security threatened, and she spoke out against the government's refusal to adopt blasphemy law reforms.
Her fellow campaigner, PPP politician Salman Taseer, was murdered by his bodyguard in January. Two months later, Pakistan's minorities minister Shahbaz Bhatti was also killed in Islamabad.
Ali Dayan Hasan, the Pakistan director of U.S.-based rights group Human Rights Watch, welcomed Rehman's appointment and called it the "most viable, face-saving formula for all concerned".
"She is a woman, a democrat, she is a devout liberal who has taken very brave positions in Pakistan on very contentious issues to do with women's rights, to do with the blasphemy law and while she took those positions she was shunned by her own government and her own party," he told AFP.
"Where it is absolutely essential that Pakistan's U.S. policy not be controlled entirely by the military, Sherry Rehman's appointment is a welcome development," Hasan said.
"But she is likely to be a far less threatening figure to the Pakistani military because she has greater empathy, if not sympathy, with the army's national security considerations," he added.
By selecting Rehman, Zardari has shown himself a "very astute political operator" and "deft at manipulating the rules of the game," Hasan said.
Source: Agence France Presse
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