KARACHI: Veteran journalist and diplomat Qutbuddin Aziz died of respiratory complications at a hospital here on Saturday night. He was 86.

He was born in 1929 in Lucknow where his maternal grandfather, Nawab Abdullah Khan, owned and edited Urdu daily Hamdam. He was educated in New Delhi, Simla and Hyderabad Deccan.

He was vice president of the St. George’s Grammar School Students Society and Nizam College Students’ Union, Hyderabad. He participated in an international youth conference in London in 1948. He did his masters in Madras, studied international relations at the London School of Economics and was trained in journalism at the Fleet Street.

Qutbuddin Aziz was managing editor of United Press of Pakistan, a news service which he and his father founded in late 1949.

During his journalistic career, he interviewed world famous personalities, including US President Harry S. Truman, Chinese Premier Chou En-lai, Japanese Prem-iers Yoshida and Hatoyama, President Garcia of the Philippines and Soviet Premier Bulganin.

Mr Aziz worked on a government assignment with the Pakistan embassy in the US in 1971 and was awarded Tamgha-i-Pakistan the same year. He testified before the 1971 War Inquiry Commission on Feb 9, 1972 and later wrote a book on the plight of the ‘pro-Pakistan’ citizens of East Pakistan during the conflict. Books written by him included a biography of the Quaid-i-Azam.

Mr Aziz was elected member of Karachi Municipal Corporation in 1958. He also served as press minister at Pakistan’s High Commission in London in the 1980s.

Test cricketer Iqbal Qasim, his son-in-law, said on Sunday that his funeral prayers would be offered on Monday after Zuhr at Masjid Usman in Defence Phase-V.

Published in Dawn, December 7th, 2015