ISLAMABAD: President Dr. Arif Alvi asked Pakistan’s designate ambassador to Ethiopia on Monday to encourage commercial and economic ties with Ethiopia by enabling and improving connections between the two nations’ business groups. Additionally, he exhorted the envoy to engage Ethiopian businesspeople about importing Pakistani goods in order to increase trade volume with Ethiopia. According to a press statement from the President Secretariat Press Wing, the president was speaking to Mian Atif Sharif, Pakistan’s future ambassador to the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, who had visited him at the Aiwan-e-Sadr.
President Alvi said that Pakistan-Ethiopia bilateral ties were marked by common history, interests, and support for each other on various international fora.
He said that the bilateral relations between the two countries needed to be further cemented by taking the mutual trade volume to its fullest potential.
The president also called for enhancing cooperation in the field of education and people-to-people contacts, adding that students in Ethiopia could benefit from online/video educational materials/courses of the Virtual University of Pakistan and Allama Iqbal Open University to enhance their skill sets.
He said that Pakistan’s offer of training young Ethiopian diplomats at the Foreign Service Academy and scholarships for banking courses would further help improve bilateral ties with Ethiopia.
The president asked the ambassador to create awareness in Ethiopia about the rising tide of Islamophobia in the world and the need for collective efforts to promote inter-faith harmony and mutual respect.
He also urged the newly-appointed envoy to highlight the human rights violations and atrocities being committed by India in the Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) as well as the maltreatment of minorities in India.