ISLAMABAD – Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan gave a warm welcome inIslamabad Tuesday to Britain’s Prince William, the son of his late friendPrincess Diana, who is on his first official trip to the country with hiswife Kate.
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were greeted with handshakes by a smilingKhan, who first met William when the prince was a young boy, on the stepsat the Prime Minister’s House in the capital.
Pakistani media simultaneously aired archive images of Diana with Khan –then a World Cup-winning cricketer who had just launched his politicalcareer — during her own visits to Pakistan more than 20 years ago.
Kate wore a traditional Pakistani dress in vibrant green and white with adark green dupatta, or long scarf, draped over her shoulder — a changefrom earlier in the day, when she wore a royal blue shalwar kameez,traditional Pakistani long shirt with trousers.
But the Duke opted for Western attire again — a dark suit and tie.
The couple were due to lunch with Khan before he heads to Saudi Arabialater Tuesday, where he is expected to continue his mission to help defusetensions in the Gulf by facilitating talks between Riyadh and Tehran.
It came after a busy morning for Kate and William, the first British royalsto come to Pakistan since William’s father Charles visited with his wifeCamilla in 2006.
The couple launched their five-day tour of the deeply patriarchal SouthAsian country by signalling their support for women’s education with avisit to a girls school in Islamabad.
They dropped in on a mathematics class, where televised images showed themsitting with some of the young students, whose blue uniforms matched theDuchess’s dress.
A video tweeted by a British reporter accompanying the couple showedWilliam smiling as he was told the girls were “big fans” of his mother, whodied in a car crash in 1997.
“That’s very sweet of you,” he could be heard saying in the video. “I was abig fan of my mother too.”
Education official Khadija Bakhtiar told AFP that the couple helped some ofthe students solve problems.
Read Top Stories
– Tight security –
William and Kate spent roughly half an hour at the government-run schoolbefore they were waved off by smiling students.
They were whisked away under heavy security to visit the Margallas, theHimalayan foothills that nestle Islamabad, where they could be seen walkingwith conservationists in the sun.
William and Kate also met President Arif Alvi, and later Tuesday they areexpected to attend a reception in their honour.
Security is extremely tight for the five-day visit, during which the coupleis set to visit Pakistan’s second-largest city Lahore — once the capitalof the Mughal Empire — as well as the mountainous north and the regionnear the border with Afghanistan in the west.
Meeting young people and promoting education is one of their priorities forthe trip, Kensington Palace has said. Nearly half of Pakistani school-agechildren — 23 million — do not attend school, UNICEF says.
Girls are particularly sidelined from education in a country where womenhave struggled for basic rights for decades.
For many in Pakistan, nostalgia for Diana has lain heavy over the trip.
She first charmed Pakistanis with an official visit in 1991, and isremembered fondly for her efforts on later private visits to help Khanraise money for a charity cancer hospital.
It is not clear if the Duke and Duchess will see Khan again after Tuesday.-APP/AFP
