DAKAR, March 14: It’s a tough job for a US envoy — trying to win hearts in Muslim nations where Palestine is an emotive cause and the West is often seen as the source of insults to Islam.

Embroiled in the war in Iraq, Washington is trying nevertheless — this week sending a Pakistani-born Texas businessman who is also a Muslim to an international Islamic summit.

Sada Cumber, appointed as America’s first envoy to the Organisation of the Islamic Conference just two weeks ago, is in Senegal’s capital for the meeting of the world’s largest Muslim group. Friday was the closing day of the two-day summit.

Iran has said the OIC should not have welcomed a representative of a country whose policies it says have threatened many of its members. But OIC Secretary General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu says Cumber can only help the Muslim world — by helping the US understand it.

“America has a deep respect for the religion of Islam,” Cumber told The Associated Press. “The freedom of faith that we exercise, that we enjoy in America, that is also a very important aspect of the American core values. Anyone who wants to practice any faith is never stopped or discouraged.”

The OIC counts among its 57 members many nations who have condemned US policies in the Middle East, including those on Iran, Lebanon, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Iraq, where American troops have battled insurgents in a bloody war for years.

Cumber said the US is ready to work with Iran, though he said he had no plans to meet Iranian officials at the summit.

Policies between the two nations have been strained since Iran’s US-backed shah was ousted during the 1979 Islamic revolution. Tensions these days centre on Iran’s nuclear programme.

“The opportunity is there right now. We need stability in that region,” Cumber said. “America understands very clearly the needs of Iran because Iran is a large country and they have needs of energy to bring growth and prosperity of the country,” he said.

“And once this issue of nuclear challenge is resolved ... the US is prepared to work with Iran to make sure they are part of the larger community, which can have prosperity and progress like any other nation.”

Cumber calls his campaign the “soft power” of the US — an effort to find common ground with Muslim nations by championing “universal values the US holds dear like religious tolerance and freedom of speech”.

But the boundaries of freedom of speech are one of the main debates at the summit, with many members saying that Western countries have taken that liberty to the extreme with political cartoons that mock Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) and inflammatory political statements.

Republishing a group of controversial cartoons in Danish papers sparked protests in recent weeks in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Jordan, Thailand, Iran and Sudan.

At the summit, leaders are being asked to approve a report on worldwide Islamophobia that calls for legal action to be taken against slights to Islam.—AP