New Delhi: Reacting to Shanghai Cooperation Organisation’s India coordinator Alok Dimri’s remarks on his happiness over his visit to Islamabad, Pakistan Foreign Office Thursday labelled it “a welcome move”.
Pakistan foreign office spokesperson Sajjad Haider Khan at a briefing in Islamabad said the visit could provide an opening for further engagement between the two countries, even though it was not a bilateral visit.
“We had national coordinators from all member states of the SCO, including from India,” he said. “And indeed, it was after a gap of maybe more than two years that we had a senior official from India visiting Pakistan.”
“His presence here marked the commonality of views as well as objectives of the entire region for peace, development, connectivity, trade and transit, which he remarked on in his interview (to PTV),” Khan added. “So it’s a welcome step.”
“In his interview to the media, he expressed his keenness to visit some other places in Pakistan also, like Sialkot and Faisalabad, which I remember, and Lahore, as well as which he termed the cultural capital of SCO for the next one year,” Khan said.
Asked whether the Indian coordinator had conveyed any message or whether communications had been exchanged between the two governments through Pakistan’s deputy prime minister, Khan stressed that India’s participation was part of the SCO’s established multilateral framework and he had “nothing new” to add to it.
“SCO is a mini-lateral organisation and participation in SCO events has occurred in the past,” the official said. “So it’s nothing new.”
Pakistan is chairing SCO for the coming year, and the official said the Indian participation represented the beginning of a broader programme of meetings and activities.
“While Pakistan is the host and since we are holding the chairmanship for the next one year, this was just the beginning,” he said. “And we hope that Indian participation will continue in the coming months and time also.”
The official described the visit as “fruitful”, noting that SCO’s national coordinators had held three days of meetings covering a wide range of issues and had agreed on activities for the year ahead.
“The SCO, the national coordinators, they conducted three days of activities, intense in scope as well as contents,” he said. “And they have agreed for the whole list of activities which will be undertaken during the next one year. So we’ll continue to have participation from different countries,” he said.
India’s National SCO coordinator Alok Dimri, had told Pakistan state TV Wednesday that he was delighted to be in Islamabad and that he would like to visit Lahore. In the video shared by Pakistan’s foreign ministry, Dimri says,“ I got to visit Pakistan for the first time. I am happy to visit Islamabad.”
“For now, I have only visited Islamabad but I wish to visit Faisalabad and Sialkot as well,” Dimri said, speaking on the sidelines of the first meeting of the SCO Council of National Coordinators under Pakistan’s chairmanship.
During the visit, he also offered a Namaste, and shook hands with the deputy prime minister Ishaq Dar whom he stood beside for an official picture.
Asked whether those gestures should be interpreted as a message to Pakistan, the official pointed to the broader significance of the visit while cautioning against treating it as a bilateral diplomatic encounter.
Amid an ongoing freeze in diplomatic ties, Dimri’s remark saw appreciation from both sides of the border.
India and Pakistan have continued to engage through the SCO even as their broader ties have deteriorated. Their officials have traded accusations at international forums like UNGA, while direct political and diplomatic contact between the two countries remains limited. However, multilateral meetings have continued.
(Edited by Viny Mishra)
Also read: Days after trading barbs at UNGA, Indian delegation in Islamabad for three-day SCO planning meet