Ask Wajid Shamsul Hasan to define his career, and the journalist of 42 years will say simply that he has been “companion to one of the greatest leaders of our time”.

Pakistan’s High Commissioner to London met a 19-year-old Benazir Bhutto in 1972 when he was part of the presidential entourage to the Simla talks with India. The two struck up an unwavering friendship.

“I was like an elder brother to her,” he says. Benazir was held in detention after her father, former Prime Minister Zulfiqar Bhutto, was executed and, Hasan, then a prominent journalist, engaged in a game of cat-and-mouse with the military regime, publishing notes she smuggled to him.

He continued to champion democracy in the press when Benazir went into exile and was anointed the head of the Pakistan People’s Party in 1984. “We all became part of the long struggle to restore democracy in Pakistan,” says Hasan.

Benazir returned triumphant to Pakistan in 1986 and after her election victory in 1988, Hasan became her media advisor and was appointed head of the National Press Trust, charged with the task of laying the foundations for press freedom in Pakistan.

Dismissed in 1990 then re-elected to power in 1993, Benazir appointed Hasan as her High Commissioner to London in 1994. But while Hasan was accompanying the future foreign secretary Robin Cook on a trip to Pakistan in 1996, Benazir’s government was again dismissed and Hasan was arrested.

Gravely ill, he spent almost nine months in detention while the police tried to extract a confession implicating Benazir’s husband, the current President of Pakistan, Asif Ali Zardari.

Eventually he was released and went into exile in London where he resumed his job as a media consultant and was appointed Chairman of the Pakistan People’s Party’s committee. As Benazir’s confidante throughout her second exile (1999-2007), together they framed the PPP’s ‘Roadmap to Democracy’.

Hasan also brokered the first talks between Benazir and her bitter rival, Nawaz Sharif, the leader of the Pakistan Muslim League (N) and the two parties joined together to formulate the Charter for Democracy.

Secret meetings with General Pervez Musharraf also took place to negotiate the end military rule in Pakistan which eventually saw Benazir return triumphant, but she was assassinated before she could see the restoration of democracy.

Instead, Zardari was made leader of the PPP which won the elections and was recently elected president after Musharraf relinquished power. While question marks were raised over Zardari’s capacity to rule, Hasan is convinced he is the man to lead Pakistan out of its crisis.

“Zardari is a man of nerves,” says the High Commissioner. “He has survived 11 years of incarceration where several attempts were made on his life. He has come out a braver and stronger man.

“It was proved again when his wife was assassinated. He kept the party – and the country – united when it could have fallen apart.”

The new government’s priorities include a root and branch reform of Pakistan’s judiciary; it also plans to incorporate more checks and balances to presidential power.

But the major challenge for the new president is tackling terrorism, particularly in the “wild northern” areas of Pakistan, says Hasan, who believes that the liberal, secular ideals of the PPP make his party better placed to find a solution.

 Education is key to deradicalisation, he says. “In 2000 we had 1,200 religious schools (madrassas); now we have over 10,000. Not all are involved in terrorist training. But those that are we need to choke off their funding and provide alternative education in the schools.”

Providing employment and infrastracture is also important, he adds. “Self-respecting people want jobs rather than living on the dole of terrorists. Quality changes will prompt the people to drive out the Taliban rather than the army fighting the Taliban.”

Hasan denies that Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the ISI, is involved with the terrorism, but he does admit there might be “rogue elements” in the organisation that need to be removed.

Bringing Pakistan back from the brink will not be easy and Hasan sees his role in London to ensure Britain’s support in his government’s efforts.

A journalist at heart, he has every intention of remaining an outspoken commentator on his country.

“But now as a diplomat I need to learn how to tell people to go to hell in such a way that they would actually like to go to hell!” he grins.