NEW YORK - “Ladies and gentleman, a glamour icon is born,” the prestigious Foreign Policy magazine said of Pakistan’s new 34-year-old Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar, who just completed a peace mission to India.
“She’s young, stylish, sharp and pretty, and Indians are falling for her,” Robert Zeliger said in a piece posted on the magazine’s website. “We give it three months before Vogue (the fashion magazine) comes calling... wait, may be two,” he wrote.
Zeligar, a writer for Foreign Policy, also said: “It seems (she) has accomplished what years of tense diplomacy haven’t been able to create some genuine goodwill between the two constantly sparring nations.”
Citing analysts, Robert Zelliger wrote that her meeting with Indian External Affairs Minister SM Krishna was “most productive” since the Mumbai attacks three years ago. “But it’s her youth and glamour that are credited with creating a ‘fresh start atmosphere’,” the article said.
“More importantly: she got high marks for wearing Roberto Cavalli sunglasses, classic pearl and diamond jewelry, a blue designer dress, and toting an Hermes Birkin bag....” “Of course, not everything was picture perfect. The Indian press did attack her for meeting with a Kashmiri separatist group later in the day,” the article noted. “But overall, it was hard not to sense the generational shift as Khar spoke about ‘a new generation of Indians and Pakistanis [who] will see a relationship that will hopefully be much different from the one that has been experienced in the last two decades’ after meeting with the Indian foreign minister who — through no fault of his own, save for his misfortune of being born 79 years ago – did totally look like her grandfather.”
The Washington Post picked up the point about generational shift, noting Ms Khar’s statement that New Delhi and Islamabad needed to acknowledge a “mind-set change” among a new generation of Indians and Pakistanis, who have been pressing their governments to engage more constructively than in the past.
“The newly installed Khar, a businesswoman and a politician, blunted concerns about her lack of experience by appearing to charm her Indian host,” the newspaper’s correspondent in New Delhi wrote.
“Studiously avoiding any mention of Kashmir at a joint media appearance after hours of talks with her 79-year-old — and vastly experienced — Indian counterpart, SM Krishna, Khar said both sides wanted the dialogue to be ‘uninterrupted and uninterruptible’,” the Post noted.
In a dispatch, The New York Times said the Khar-Krishna meeting “signaled that broad-based talks aimed at resolving issues between the countries were back on track”. Citing analysts, the Times said, “The measures the ministers announced were relatively small but represent a significant change in tone and outlook for the relationship between the countries.”