During her recent visit to Pakistan, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pledged a fresh start in relations with the country, an "increasingly embattled and skeptical partner" in the struggle against Islamic militancy, reports Reuters.

"We are turning the page," Clinton told reporters as she began her first visit to Islamabad as the top US diplomat amid rising anti-American sentiment in Pakistan and an expanding US-led war in neighboring Afghanistan.

Clinton also emphasized the importance of addressing people directly and highlighted the role that investment by citizens could play. Clinton's public diplomacy initiatives started two days prior to her departure for Pakistan where she "would seek to emphasize the common goals that the American and Pakistani peoples have in fighting religious extremism," notes The Dawn.

While Clinton urged Pakistanis to reject extremism, which she described to be "a cancer" to society, she also emphasized the need to improve education and gender equality.

Clinton's visit comes amid widespread Pakistani anger over a recent major US aid bill, known as the Kerry-Lugar Bill. Despite tripling assistance to Pakistan to some 1.5 billion dollars per year to be distributed over the next five years, the bill was bitterly denounced for imposing conditions, which according to critics, violate Pakistan's national sovereignty. 

"These aren't conditions on Pakistan so much as they are metrics for measuring whether we think our aid is being productive," Clinton said to Reuters, noting that similar measures were used for other US aid programs.

Certain clauses from the Kerry-Lugar bill were perceived as clearly "intrusive" and "unacceptable" with an implicit attempt to micro-manage Pakistan, reports Javed Malik for The Khaleej Times. Segments of Pakistani society- including the media, the academics, political parties, and even the armed forces- reacted negatively.

Malik points out that the reaction to the bill in Pakistan is just another example of poor US public diplomacy by US policy makers. "If their goal was to 'win hearts and minds'" of the Pakistani people, points out Malik, the policy makers are "going about it in the wrong way."

Amidst other concerns, he notes that the rejection of the bill was also a "manifestation of the growing frustration over some US Policies which are viewed as one-sided and sometimes marred with double standards."

Malik adds that it seems that the US "has an image and self-perception problem." While it promotes democracy, it appears to be a nation of double standards as the unilateral US drone attacks continue inside Pakistan.

He continues, "People ask, 'Can the United States really be our friend when its drones are attacking us and violating our country's sovereignty?'" If the US truly wants to "positively transform" its relationship with Pakistan and win the hearts of its people, which was the real goal of the Kerry Lugar Bill, Malik comments, "Some soul searching is required."

Among several recommendations, the author notes that Pakistanis above all are looking for the US to respect of their sovereignty. "Everyone in Pakistan wants good, positive and healthy relations with the US, but as someone once said, they want 'Friends not Masters,'" he writes.

Secretary Clinton sought to improve public diplomacy efforts towards Pakistan by declaring that the US government adopted a new approach which would "not leave any misstatement or inaccuracy unanswered" in order to counter extremist propaganda in Pakistan, reports The Nation.

Clinton, who says "the United States wants to 'turn the page' on its relationship with Pakistan," is devoting a significant amount of energy to public diplomacy in an attempt to counter rising Pakistani criticism of the alliance with Washington.

She added, "We have, under Judith McHale, our Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy, undertaken a very thorough analysis of what we could do better ... we intend to counter a lot of this propaganda with the best weapon we have; namely, the truth." She also emphasized the importance of working more closely with the Pakistani media.

President Barack Obama's administration wants to engage with Pakistan. However, the country traditionally views the United States as interested only in securing its military cooperation in the fight against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.

Clinton has pledged 85 million dollars to countering poverty and 125 million dollars to improving Pakistan's woefully inadequate electricity supply. However, underscoring the complexity of the relationship between both allies, Pakistani officials are loath to publicize the aid because of the deep-seated anti-American sentiment in Pakistan, reports The New York Times.

At a military briefing, Pakistani Army spokesman Major General Athar Abbas declared that Pakistan was solely responsible for the fight in South Waziristan, saying his country is acting completely alone. "Let us finish the job on our own," he told reporters.

"The Pakistanis insist [that there be] 'no American face' on their war. Period," said one senior American military officer in Southwest Asia, who would only speak anonymously because he did not want to jeopardize his relationship with his Pakistani counterparts.

The New York Times remarks that given the reluctance of Pakistani and American officials to speak openly about the assistance, it is difficult to assess how effective the American aid has been in current combat operations.