NEW YORK June 04 (NNI): Dr Maleeha Lodhi, former envoy of Pakistan to Washington told a big gathering at the international educational conference at Salt Lake city that the US needs to reach out to the Muslim world to bridge a growing perception gap.
Addressing about 2,000 people from universities across the US as key note speaker, she said that while the US needed to live up to its responsibilities as the world's primary power, rulers in the Arab and Islamic world also had to meet the expectations of their own people.
She said the Arab world needed to address three deficits: the freedom, knowledge and the gender deficit..
The record in the Arab world of meeting the two challenges of recent history as the Muslim Governments had neither adequately learnt after the 9/11 incident.
Dr Maleeha Lodhi said that this was a critical moment in world history confronted as the global community is by complex threats and common challenges. These had to be addressed through cooperation and global institutions which could be attained by adoption of democracy.
The world needed global institutions with authority that could create peace and security and implement norms evolved through consensus and consent. The vast asymmetries in power and wealth had to be addressed to establish not just a more humane but a safer world.
Dr Lodhi told the audience at NAFSA's annual conference that the key question for the future is whether in an era marked by a vast asymmetry in power the US would set an example in cooperative behaviour working through global institutions to create a culture of peace and harmony.
A dialogue between civilizations was urgent but pointed out that so far this had been reduced to a clich챕 and denuded of substance as political leaderships on both sides had not taken up the challenge to inject content to what remained little more than a slogan.
The US and the Western community needed to forge a better understanding with the Muslim world and give political meaning and substance to such a dialogue. Citizens must be involved in this dialogue and so should be educators.
In a wide ranging speech Dr Maleeha Lodhi outlined the developments leading to the Iraq war and said that this and other actions taken by the US in the global arena involving turning its back on international treaties, norms and negotiating forums had created an impression in the world that the US acted unilaterally and showed no sensitivity to other nation's sensibilities. This had undermined America's 'soft' power and widened the gap between the US and the rest of the world.
She said the gap between how America sees itself and how the rest of the world
sees America was growing. This needed to be closed if we are to move toward a safer and just world
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