ISLAMABAD: The new US envoy to Pakistan, who was appointed nearly four years after the last American ambassador left Islamabad, said on Saturday he was looking forward to deepening ties between the two nations.

Ambassador Donald Blome began his assignment at the US Embassy in Islamabad last week. He has served as an American diplomat since 1993 in Tunisia, Afghanistan, Israel, Kuwait, and Egypt.

The last US ambassador to Pakistan, David Hale, left Islamabad in August 2018. Until Blome’s appointment, the American mission was led by its charge d’affaires.

“I look forward to deepening the connections between the Pakistani and American people, which have a rich history and an even brighter future,” Blome said in a video message posted by the US Embassy on Twitter.

“We live today in a world full of challenges, and we can address those by challenges by working together side by side.”

US-Pakistani ties deteriorated in the past few years under former prime minister Imran Khan, who has been a strident opponent of America’s war on terror and Pakistan’s partnership in that war with Washington.

Ousted in a no-confidence vote in April this year, Khan accused the US administration of colluding with the opposition to remove him from power — a claim Washington and the new Pakistani government deny.

Pakistan’s new government has indicated it was seeking a new engagement with the US.

Last month, Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said the US and his country must move beyond past tensions.

“We believe that Pakistan must continue to engage with the United States at all levels,” he told the Associated Press that on the sidelines of a meeting on the global food crisis at UN headquarters in New York, where he also held talks with top US diplomats, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Bhutto Zardari said the Pakistan-US relationship in the past had been “too colored by the events in Afghanistan, of the geopolitical considerations, and it’s time for us to move beyond that to engage in a far broader, deeper and more meaningful relationship.”