British House of Lords Member visits COMSATS

Celina Ali

Islamabad: Baroness Sayeeda Hussain Warsi, British lawyer, politician, and a member of the House of Lords, UK, who served as Co-chairperson of the Conservative Party from 2010 to 2012, visited the Secretariat of the Commission on Science and Technology for Sustainable Development in the South (COMSATS) to meet the Executive Director COMSATS, Ambassador Dr. M. Nafees Zakaria.

Amb. Zakaria, who has also served as the High Commissioner for Pakistan to the United Kingdom from 2019 to 2020, shared with Baroness Warsi the information about COMSATS_ an intergovernmental organization of 27 developing countries with a Network of 25 International S&T Centres of Excellence.

He also shared the recent initiatives the organizations has taken in the fields of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Information Technology (IT) and digital technologies, industrial biotechnology, climate change and environment, renewable energy, genomics, electric vehicles, precision agriculture, and micro-chip circuit designing.

Amb. Zakaria informed Baroness Warsi that the Centres of Excellence provide COMSATS the technical ground for scientific cooperation and collaboration. They were of the view that COMSATS should explore opportunities for cooperation with the U.K. while Baroness Sayeeda Warsi assured of her support to that end.

Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, in her erstwhile capacity as Co-Chair of the Conservatives Party U.K. had played a lead role in the establishment of the Conservative Friends of Pakistan with both countries’ then Prime Ministers present on the occasion. Ambassador Zakaria, then as Deputy High Commissioner, extended full assistance to Baroness Warsi.

With the cherished memories of friendship and cooperation between the Baroness and Mr. Zakaria, as representatives of their respective countries, the meeting afforded good opportunity to open discussion in new domains.