SCO: External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar to visit Pakistan today, may meet Shehbaz Sharif at dinner
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar will leave for Pakistan on Tuesday to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Islamabad.
Jaishankar is scheduled to stay overnight in the Pakistani capital Islamabad and will address the SCO summit on October 16. While bilateral meetings are anticipated, especially with Russia, there is no indication of an official India-Pakistan meeting. However, Jaishankar might interact with Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar during a welcome dinner being hosted for the delegates.
In a previous statement, Jaishankar emphasised that his visit was for a multilateral event, not for discussing India-Pakistan relations. This visit marks the first high-level diplomatic trip from India to Pakistan in several years.
The last Indian Foreign Minister to visit Pakistan was Sushma Swaraj. She had travelled to Islamabad in December 2015 to attend a conference on Afghanistan. In August 2016, then Home Minister Rajnath Singh attended a SAARC meeting in the neighbouring country.
Addressing the United Nations General Assembly recently, Jaishankar had termed Pakistan a “dysfunctional nation” coveting the lands of others. “It must be exposed and must be countered,” he had said.
The visit comes amid tense India-Pakistan relations, especially following the Pulwama attack and India’s surgical strikes in 2019. Despite the strained ties, India’s participation in the SCO, an influential economic and security bloc, remains significant.
India has been involved with the SCO since 2005 and became a permanent member, along with Pakistan, in 2017.
Apart from India, the SCO has China, Russia, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan as member countries.
