Zardari urges Trump to seize opportunity missed by Obama administration

Former Pakistan president Asif Ali Zardari has urged U.S. President Donald Trump to appoint a high-level envoy to South Asia to underscore American leadership in the region and seize an opportunity missed by the previous Barack Obama administration to coordinate a top-level response to the regional terrorist threat.

Zardari further urged critics to give him a chance to make his mark in South Asia rather than "dismiss him out of hand", reports the Washington Times.

He said that Trump's critics should not dismiss him out of hand but rather give him a chance to make his mark in the region, beset by conflicts in Afghanistan, jihadi terrorist movements and the increasingly tense Indian-Pakistani dispute over Kashmir.

"The man (Trump) has managed to get a majority in states where it was never imagined that the Democrats could lose. So how do we underestimate him?" said Zardari.