(CNSNews.com) – Buoyed by the presence in the White House of a president who wants to prioritize relations with the world’s Muslims, the head of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) visited both Washington and Brussels this week, and urged the U.S. to quickly appoint an envoy to the Islamic bloc.

OIC secretary-general Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu was in Washington on Tuesday when the State Department, in an internal memo, announced that it has selected a “special representative to Muslim communities.”

The department chose not to announce the move publicly, but State Department spokesman Ian Kelly on Thursday acknowledged that Farah Pandith has been chosen for the position. Pandith, a Muslim of Kashmiri origin, served as “senior advisor for Muslim engagement to the assistant secretary for European and Eurasian affairs” in the Bush administration.

It was not immediately clear Thursday how her new role compares to that of U.S. special envoy to the OIC, a post created by President Bush early last year and filled by Sada Cumber, a Pakistan-born Texas businessman. A department press officer said late Thursday she could provide no further information but that a statement may be released on Friday.

Cumber said from Texas Thursday that he had asked the Obama administration to appoint a new envoy “as I would like to pursue another position or engage more into my private sector initiatives.”

Ihsanoglu told the Turkish Anadolu state news agency this week that he had told Clinton that the U.S. should immediately appoint a special envoy for its relations with the Islamic world.

The two were scheduled to have met, but the event was cancelled because of Clinton’s recent elbow fracture and surgery.

Instead they held a “comprehensive” telephone conversation and “exchanged views as to the ways and means of furthering the engagement between the OIC and the U.S. in the coming period,” the OIC said in a statement.

Clinton had thanked Ihsanoglu for his “constructive response” to President Obama’s address to the “Islamic world” in Cairo earlier this month, while Ihsanoglu had “underlined the necessity of translating the goodwill statements of the president into policies and of implementing those policies through concrete programs and projects,” it said.

From Washington, Ihsanoglu went to Brussels where he announced plans to open a representative office to the European Union, with a key function of combating “Islamophobia.”

The OIC, a 57-member bloc of Muslim majority states that wields increasing clout at the United Nations, already has permanent missions in the U.N. cities of New York and Geneva, and “OIC groups” in Washington, Vienna and Paris.

Headquartered in the Saudi city of Jeddah, the OIC has existed for 40 years, but in recent times has become much more visible in the West, largely as a result of its controversial campaign against the “defamation” of Islam.

It has steered more than a dozen resolutions on the subject through the U.N.  Opponents of the drive, including religious freedom and free speech advocates, see it as an attempt to shield Islam and Islamic practices from criticism.

Ihsanoglu, a Turk, told the Turkish newspaper Today’s Zaman that “fighting anti-Islam propaganda” will be among the main aims of the office in Brussels.

The paper noted that major incidents considered to be “Islamophobic” had occurred in Europe, citing the furor over Danish newspaper cartoons satirizing Mohammed.

While in Brussels, Ihsanoglu met the E.U.’s external relations commissioner, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, and said they discussed Obama’s speech in Cairo. Ihsanoglu had been in the audience when the president spoke.

“Obama’s speech was historic and did not resemble any other speeches in the past,” he told the Anadolu agency on Wednesday. “There has never been a speech delivered to the Muslims that was so constructive and positive as Obama’s speech.”

First envoy reviews accomplishments

Asked for an assessment of his efforts as the first envoy to the OIC, Cumber on Thursday provided a copy of a white paper on the “role and accomplishments” of the envoy during the 10-month period he served in the post.

He listed as a major priority “strengthening the OIC’s denunciations of suicide bombing and terrorism in general,” and said his efforts had been an “important catalyst” in the case of a statement by Ihsanoglu last January calling suicide bombers “enemies of Islam.”

Cumber said in the paper disagreements between OIC and Western governments over the issue of protection from religious defamation versus freedom of expression “have sometimes poisoned an already tense dialogue.”

His office as envoy had “repeatedly served as a platform for expressing the importance that the U.S. places on freedom of expression. At the same time, it has also worked with Islamic countries to improve mutual understanding and increase the quality of dialogue over the issue.”

Other accomplishments listed by Cumber included promoting interfaith dialogue, exploring ways for the U.S. and Islamic governments and organizations to promote “health, development and quality of life in the least-developed Islamic nations,” and working to secure recognition by OIC members for Kosovo’s independence.

(OIC members have been divided on Kosovo, and only 13 have recognized Muslim-majority state so far. Saudi Arabia and Turkey are among those that have done so, while key opponents of recognition include Iran, Syria and Egypt. Analysts attribute their unwillingness to support Kosovo to a reluctance to anger Russia, Serbia’s historical ally, which strongly opposed the independence move.)

Cumber’s paper ends with several recommendations for the future.

He proposed making the office a permanent one, both to provide the envoy with additional recognition and legitimacy in carrying out the task but also to “send a powerful message to the OIC and to the Muslim world that the U.S. understands the importance of the organization and values the OIC as a partner.”

Cumber also recommended that the office be provided with a permanent staff and a “reliable, adequate budget.”

‘The most democratic religion’

While in the U.S. this week, Ihsanoglu met with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, a member of a “leadership group” driving the U.S.-Muslim Engagement Project and a strong backer of Obama’s outreach.

In April, Albright was quoted by the Voice of America as telling a meeting of OIC ambassadors that she had no doubt Islamic countries could be democracies.

“Actually, in my study of religions, in many ways Islam is maybe the most democratic religion because there is nobody between you and God. So I do not think that is something that can be used as reason not to have Muslim democracies.”

According to criteria applied by the veteran rights watchdog Freedom House, 14 of the OIC’s 57 members qualify as “electoral democracies.”

Only six of the 57 – Benin, Guyana, Indonesia, Mali, Senegal and Suriname – are deemed “free” according to a Freedom House annual evaluation, which scores nations for political rights and civil liberties.