The Pakistani
ambassador to the U.S. hosted a fundraiser at his residence for a
neoconservative D.C. think-tank, which solicited donations of $5,000 for
invitations to the event. But the think-tank, the Foundation
for Defense of Democracies (FDD), didn't bother to tell the Pakistani
embassy that the event was a fundraiser or that it was sandwiched in the middle
of a two-and-a-half day conference on "Countering the Iranian
Threat" put on by the group.
"We didn't
know at all that they have done this fundraising," Imran Gardezi, a
spokesperson for the Pakistani embassy, told the Middle East Channel. "And
neither did they share with us that they would be doing this conference. Very
frankly, we didn't know about this conference."
Though the dinner
appeared in the paper and online conference programs, FDD
president Cliff May insisted that the two were unrelated:
"The dinner was separate from the conference but it coincided with the
conference. Why? Because many friends of FDD were in town for the
conference," he wrote in an e-mail to the Middle East Channel.
May conceded that his staff may have failed to notify the Pakistani
embassy that the group was in the middle of hosting the conference.
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