29 October 2004	Friday	14 Ramazan 1425

WASHINGTON, Oct 28: The United States and Pakistan have launched 18 cooperative projects to build Islamabad's science and technology capacity and create technical links between the two countries, a briefing in Washington was told.

The projects for 2004, launched under the US-Pakistan Science and Technology Agreement, include bringing telemedicine capabilities to rural areas.

Five and a half million dollars have been approved for 2005 by the first joint committee meeting under the US-Pakistan Science and Technology Agreement. The projects for 2004 were officially launched on Sept 28-29 in Islamabad.

A press release issued here on Wednesday said that the projects were funded with $1 million from Pakistan - $500,000 each from the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Higher Education Committee - and $2 million from the US.

Lee Morin, deputy assistant secretary for health, space and science at the US Department of State and leader of the US delegation termed the agreement "very exciting".

"It represents a reinvigoration of an agreement that came out of a 2002 meeting at Camp David between President Bush and President Pervez Musharraf," he said.

The joint committee - co-chaired by Morin and Shehryar Khan, Ministry of Science and Technology's joint technical adviser - reviewed more than 50 submitted proposals, the majority from Pakistan, from which the final 18 projects were chosen.

In the area of education, scientific journal content is to be supplied with help from the US National Academies of Science which would be integrated into Pakistan's existing digital library system. It is to be funded with a combined contribution of $3 million.

The Pakistan Council for Renewable Water Resources has received funding for collaboration on agricultural watershed management, helping design a water quality measurement programme and developing a desalination facility.

Another capacity-building project is a telemedicine collaboration between the Pakistan and US Army Medical Research and Material Command. Two Pakistani medical doctors are to be trained for a month with the Army Medical Centre at Fort Detrick in Maryland so they could set up a model programme in 2005 in Islamabad.