'US wants closer ties with young Muslims'

Extending an offer of partnership, the US special representative for Muslim communities said on Wednesday that her focus would be on building bridges with the next generation members of the community.

"With one-fourth of the world's population that is Muslim, of course our country (United States) wants to do as much as we can to build partnerships across the board," said 40-year-old Srinagar-born Farah Pandit, who is on a visit to India, said at a function to felicitate her.

"I want to extend my hand in partnership with you," she said adding that the state department had given her a mandate to engage with Muslims around the world in every way.

"We can and we want to extend the partnership in a very strong way that will allow us to develop long-term relationship with Muslims all over the world," she said.

Observing that building relationships was a long-term process, the US special representative said, "We are working very hard for this".

"A paradigm shift has taken place. We are doing this in a wide-range of ways," she said, adding that the focus would be more on the next generation.

Pandith said that in Barak Obama, it was for the first time that a US president talked to Muslims directly.

Uzra Ziya, political counsellor of the US Embassy, said, "There is far more that unites us (Muslims) than divides us".

Ziya said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit to Washington took the US-India partnership one step further.

Since the time Pandith took charge of her new assignment on September 15, 2009, she has been all over the world -- from Nigeria to Kazakhstan, Malaysia to Philippines and Indonesia, and Brazil to Saudi Arabia and Iraq -- working hard to meet the young Muslims come from diverse places.

The offer to build partnership with the Muslim communities started with US President Barack Obama's speech in Cairo when he talked about the desire to build relations on the foundation of "mutual interest and mutual respect" with Muslims.

There is a paradigm shift and a "huge effort" is underway to build the partnership with the community; offers and initiatives are underway in a wide range of ways including education, health, science and technology, development, etc, she said.