External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar will visit Pakistan for attending Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit to be held on October 15–16, Ministry of external affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal announced in a press briefing on Friday.
"EAM Jaishankar will lead a delegation to Pakistan for the SCO summit which will be held in Islamabad on 15th and 16th October”, said the spokesperson without mentioning if he would meet any Pakistani leaders on the sidelines.
The summit will be preceded by a ministerial meeting and multiple rounds of senior officials' meetings focused on financial, economic, socio-cultural and humanitarian cooperation among the member states.
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The visit by any Indian foreign minister will be the first in nearly a decade. Last visit to Islamabad was made in December 2015 by the then external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj for attending a security conference on Afghanistan.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi was originally invited for the summit in August.
SCO is an intergovernmental organisation founded in 1996 as Shanghai Five and renamed into its current name in 2001. It comprises India, China, Russia, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Iran and Belarus.
India and Pakistan became full members of the organisation in 2017. India, under its first presidency of SCO, hosted the 23rd meeting of the SCO Council of Heads of State in July 2023 in virtual format.
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The last high-level visit between India and Pakistan took place in May last year when Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, Pakistan's foreign minister at the time, attended the SCO foreign ministers' meeting in Goa.
Strained Relations
The visit will take place at a time when relations between both the countries have been strained over the Kashmir dispute. India and Pakistan have fought three wars earlier, including two over the control of Kashmir.
In his address in 79th session of the UN General Assembly last month, Jaishankar said that the issue to be resolved between India and Pakistan is now only the vacation of illegally occupied Indian territory by Pakistan, and the abandonment of its long-standing attachment to terrorism.
“Many countries get left behind due to circumstances beyond their control, but some make conscious choices with disastrous consequences. A premier example is our neighbour, Pakistan,” he added.
India’s relations with its neighbour have largely been frozen as both the countries downgraded diplomatic ties after New Delhi scrapped Kashmir's special autonomy and split it into two Union territories in 2019.
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