Indian Foreign Minister Jaishankar to visit Pakistan for SCO summit

NEW DELHI: Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar will visit Pakistan to participate in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit later this month, the Indian foreign ministry spokesman said on Friday.

The visit will be the first by an Indian foreign minister to Pakistan in nearly a decade.

Indian foreign ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said Jaishankar will lead the Indian delegation to Pakistan for the summit of Eurasian leaders on Oct. 15 and 16 but did not say if he would meet any Pakistani leaders on the sidelines.

Earlier, the Pakistan’s Foreign Office had confirmed that invitations to the upcoming Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Council of Heads of Government meeting had been sent to all member country heads of government, including the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi.

‘Pakistan should promote trade, economic ties with SCO member states’

“We have also received some confirmations,” Foreign Office Spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch said then.

Last week, the Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) of the Cabinet approved additional funds of Rs1 billion for hosting the SCO Summit to be held on October 15-16, 2024, official sources told Business Recorder.

According to the Foreign Office, being the Organisation’s second-highest decision-making body, hosting the SCO summit this year would not only reassert Pakistan’s pivotal position as an important regional country that firmly believes in peace, dialogue and diplomacy, but would also increase the country’s prestige and reputation for having hosted an event of this scale and representational level after a long time.

In 2023, Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari visited India to lead Pakistan’s delegation to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Council of Foreign Ministers (CFM) that was held on May 4-5, 2023 in Goa. This was the first official visit by a senior Pakistani official to India since 2016.

While Bilawal did not meet any Indian leaders, he and Jaishankar used the forum to trade blame for their frosty ties.

Earlier this year, Jaishankar said that India would want to “find a solution to the issue of years-old cross-border terrorism” but added that it cannot be the “policy of a good neighbour”.