WASHINGTON, Feb 15: For decades Pakistan’s policy planners had wrong priorities which prevented the country from establishing close relations with educational and scientific institutions in the United States, according to Dr Attaur Rehman, chairman of the Higher Education Commission.

“Education and science and technology were not the main thrust of our policies,” he said at a joint briefing in Washington on Thursday with a US official.

“The scope of the current programme is much broader than ever before and that is a major achievement,” said Dr Arden L. Bement, director of the US National Science Foundation and leader of the US team at a two-day conference of the Pakistan-US Joint Committee on Science and Technology that was held in Washington on Feb 13-14.

Dr Rehman said it was for the first time that the two sides had held a dialogue on expanding cooperation in higher education, agriculture, health, sciences, engineering and innovation and entrepreneurship.

The two sides signed a memorandum of understanding for enhancing cooperation between the Higher Education Commission and various institutions working under the US Department of Agriculture. The delegates discussed cooperation in agriculture, earth sciences and science and technology development, higher education, health research, disease prevention and renewable energy.

Dr Rehman said the US could help Pakistan prevent diseases like hepatitis and malaria.