The sweet juices running down my hands from the orangy-yellow Pakistani mangoes were just what the invitation had promised. Come to the mango festival at the Pakistan Embassy, I had been assured, and taste mangoes as you’ve never tasted them before.

Much like other festivalgoers crowded around the trays of ambrosia-like fruit, I was alternating between juicy bites and exclamations of utter deliciousness. 

The problem was those sticky hands. I was about to have a pull-aside (diplomatic-speak for a brief meeting on the margins of another event) with two Pakistan officials. And there would be handshakes. So I decided to let the stars of the festival speak – or maybe stick – for themselves. And if either diplomat was bothered by it, neither let on.

That may be because the mango festival had a deeper objective. Ambassador Masood Khan wants Americans to have greater access to what he calls “the king of fruits” – not just any mangoes, but the royal varieties of Pakistan’s Sindh and Punjab provinces.

Currently Pakistan exports less than $1 million in fruity gold to the United States annually. Compare that with the mangoes coming from Mexico last year, worth $400 million. The reason? Not distance, so much. But there’s a Department of Agriculture requirement that all Pakistani mangoes enter the United States at the port of Houston, where the fruit is irradiated to USDA specifications.

Pakistan has responded by building an irradiation facility in Karachi. All it lacks, says Trade Minister Azmat Mahmud, is USDA approval.

I started to grasp the ulterior motive of the trays of luscious fruit arrayed before this Washington crowd. Just maybe, the mangoes’ juicy bliss could accomplish what diplomacy has not yet done. Just maybe, Pakistani officials wanted my fellow festivalgoers to join the clamor for their country’s “king of fruits.” Just maybe, they succeeded.