New Delhi: External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar will attend the heads of government meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in Pakistan this month, becoming the first Indian foreign minister to visit the country since 2015.
Ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said Friday that Jaishankar will head the Indian delegation to attend the gathering on 15-16 October, to be held at the Jinnah Convention Centre in Islamabad. Pakistan formally invited India in August.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is the head of the Indian government, but for the SCO, he attends the heads of state summit, while the heads of government summit is attended by the foreign minister or the vice-president.
In November 2020, then vice-president Venkaiah Naidu chaired the SCO heads of government meeting, which was held virtually due to COVID. Three years later in 2023, India hosted the SCO heads of state summit in the virtual format as well.
Rajnath Singh was the last senior Union minister to visit India’s western neighbour in 2016. Singh, the then home minister, visited Pakistan for the home ministers meeting of the Souh Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC).
The last Indian external affairs minister to visit Pakistan was Sushma Swaraj, who represented India at the Heart of Asia conference on Afghanistan, hosted at Islamabad on 9 December 2015.
Ties remain tense
Ties between the two countries have been at an all-time low, following a series of terrorist attacks, starting with the strike on the Pathankot air force base in 2016, followed by one in Uri the same year. India skipped the SAARC summit, which was to be hosted by Islamabad in November that year.
After the abrogation of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir in 2019, Islamabad announced the suspension of trade with India, which is still in force.
Though no SAARC summit has been held since 2015, India and Pakistan have other multilateral fora in common. The SCO is one such organisation which both joined in 2017.
Former Pakistan foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari had visited India in May last year to attend the SCO Council of Foreign Ministers’ meet, held in Goa. It was the first high-level delegation from Islamabad after Nawaz Sharif attended the oath-taking ceremony of Modi in May 2014.
(Edited by Tikli Basu)