ISLAMABAD, Feb 17: Minister for Information Technology Awais Ahmad Khan Leghari has met telecom ministers from various countries and chiefs of leading telecom giants in Spain to discuss methods for enhancing cooperation and forging new partnerships in the field of telecommunication.

Mr Leghari had gone to Spain to receive Government Leadership Award and attend the ministerial meeting on the occasion of 3-GSM World Congress and the Government Mobile Forum, the premier policy-makers congregation at the GSMA’s 3-GSM World Congress.

According to a message received here on Friday, the minister held separate interactive meetings with ministers Mutahi Kagwe of Kenya, Lim Keng Yaik of Malaysia, Cornelius Adebayo of Nigeria, Jose Montilla of Spain, Binali Yildirim of Turkey and Boris Antonyuk of Russia.

Mr Leghari discussed with his counterparts matters of mutual interest, including growth of telecom services and expansion of relations through increased cooperation in the area of information communication technologies.

The minister said that Pakistan would continue to work closely with the countries regionally and globally for bringing further improvement in the field of policy-making and implementation.

The visiting ministers also congratulated Awais Leghari for pioneering the formulation of forward-looking, transparent and successful telecom policies that led to the Government Leadership Award.

Earlier, the minister was also greeted by the President of GSMA and CEO Rob Convey. Mr Convey committed to visit Pakistan in near future.

Later, the CEOs of global telecom operations like Vodafone, Orange, China Mobile, Teleforica and Motorola also called on the minister.

In other meetings with him, leaders of global giants like Cisco, Nokia and Motorola also expressed interest in further increasing their presence in Pakistan.

Mr Leghari hoped that all such collaboration plans would go a long way towards improving the image of the country on the global scale besides creating new employment opportunities.