ISLAMABAD – UK High Commissioner Thomas Drew said he was already lookingforward to “this summer s big cricketing event”, Pakistan s upcomingEngland tour.

“But I also hope that it will not be long before I can welcome an Englandteam to Pakistan,” he told AFP Wednesday. “That really is something to lookforward to.”

Pakistan s interior minister has invited the England cricket team to tourthe country for the first time since 2005, after a successful visit by theWest Indies amid improved security boosted hopes of an internationalrevival.

A visit by a major Test-playing nation such as England would be hugelysignificant, in terms of both cricket as well as Pakistan s wider securityand the message it hopes to send about its crackdown on extremism andmilitancy.

Interior minister Ahsan Iqbal extended the invitation to UK HighComissioner Thomas Drew on Tuesday, urging the international community torecognise the strides Pakistan has made.

“The successful staging of international matches in Pakistan is a clearproof that we have defeated terrorism and extremism,” he said, according toan official statement.

For years foreign teams refused to tour Pakistan, wracked by Islamistattacks. In 2009 an attack on the Sri Lankan team in Lahore droveinternational cricket from the country entirely, and their fixtures havebeen played in the United Arab Emirates.

But security has improved dramatically in recent years, and since 2015Pakistan has hosted Zimbabwe, a World XI, Sri Lanka, the finals of itsdomestic T20 league for two years running and, most recently, the WestIndies, for a short T20 series which finished on Tuesday.

The matches have been staged in both Lahore and Karachi, thecricket-obsessed country s two largest cities, both of which have been hitrepeatedly by militant violence over the last decade.

Head-of-state level security has been provided for visiting players, mostof whom have come away praising the arrangements.

Various military operations across the country have led to the increasedsecurity, particularly in the northwestern tribal region, where militantsonce operated with impunity.

But the US maintains that Pakistan is hosting militant safe havens in thenorthwest, accusations Islamabad denies; while critics warn that thecountry has not gone far enough in rooting out the long-term causes ofextremism. – APP/AFP