Mr. Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri

Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri is the founding Chairman of the Institute of Peace and Connectivity (IPAC) and Chairman of the Beaconhouse Group. Educated at Cambridge and Oxford, he was called to the Bar from Gray’s Inn, London, and studied at the Sorbonne, Paris. He served as Pakistan’s Foreign Minister from 2002 to 2007, an eventful tenure during which Pakistan was designated a Major Non-NATO Ally of the United States, defense and civil nuclear cooperation with China was substantially deepened, the Gwadar Port was completed, and F-16 acquisition agreements were finalized.

His backchannel diplomacy with India produced a widely acknowledged framework for a potential Kashmir settlement, documented in his acclaimed book Neither a Hawk nor a Dove, published worldwide by Oxford University Press and by Penguin in India. He chairs the Understanding China Forum and co-chairs the Pakistan Council on Foreign Relations.