Indian foreign minister S Jaishankar to attend SCO summit in Pakistan

India’s foreign ministry confirmed that Jaishankar will be in Islamabad to represent India at the summit.

• EasternEye
• 15 October, 2024

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By: EasternEye

INDIA’s foreign minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, will travel to Pakistan on Tuesday to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit. This marks the first visit by India’s top diplomat to Pakistan in nearly ten years.

India’s foreign ministry confirmed that Jaishankar will be in Islamabad to represent India at the summit. Both India and Pakistan have indicated that there are no plans for bilateral talks, and Jaishankar’s visit will adhere strictly to the SCO schedule.

India and Pakistan, both nuclear-armed nations, have had a fraught relationship, having fought several wars since their independence and partition in 1947.

The SCO, a regional grouping that includes China, India, Russia, and Pakistan, among others, is often seen as a counterbalance to Western alliances such as NATO.

“India remains actively engaged in the SCO format,” the Indian foreign ministry said in a statement.

The summit in Islamabad will focus on issues related to trade, humanitarian efforts, and cultural exchanges, though the SCO is primarily known for discussing security matters.

The last visit by an Indian foreign minister to Pakistan took place in 2015, when Sushma Swaraj attended a conference on Afghanistan. That same year, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi made a surprise visit to Lahore to meet then-Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif, briefly raising hopes of improved relations.

However, in 2019, relations between the two countries deteriorated significantly after India’s government revoked the limited autonomy of Indian-administered Kashmir, leading Pakistan to suspend trade and downgrade diplomatic ties with New Delhi.

In 2023, Pakistan’s former foreign minister, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, attended an SCO meeting in India’s Goa, where he and Jaishankar had a verbal exchange. No one-on-one meeting was held between them.

(With inputs from AFP)