The SCO, comprising India, China, Russia, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, is an influential economic and security bloc that has emerged as one of the largest trans-regional international organisations.
Staff Reporter
India’s External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar will visit Pakistan to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Council of Heads of Government meeting on October 15-16.
Jaishankar’s visit to Islamabad comes amid recent strained relations between the two neighbour nations, primarily due to the Kashmir issue as well as the cross-border terrorism emanating from Pakistan.
The SCO heads of state level meeting is usually attended by Presidents and Prime Ministers.
India’s ministry of external affairs today announced that external affairs minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar will lead the Indian delegation to Pakistan for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit.
“EAM Jaishankar will lead a delegation to Pakistan for the SCO summit which will be held in Islamabad on 15th and 16th October,” MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said at a briefing.
This would be Jaishankar’s first visit to Pakistan as India’s External Affairs Minister. The announcement came after the ministry confirmed in August that Pakistan had sent an invitation to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to attend the SCO meeting scheduled this month. “We have received an invitation from Pakistan for SCO summit. We don’t have an update on that. We will let you know the situation later,” Jaiswal said at the time.
Pakistan holds the rotating chairmanship of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Council of Heads of Government (CHG) and in that capacity, will be hosting the two-day in-person SCO Heads of Governments Meeting in October. The SCO event in Pakistan will be preceded by a ministerial meeting and several rounds of senior officials’ meetings focused on financial, economic, socio-cultural, and humanitarian cooperation among the SCO member states.
Pakistan is hosting the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Council of Heads of Government (CHG) meeting.
Jaishankar’s Pakistan will take a place nearly a month after he called out the neighbouring country over cross-border terrorism at the United Nations General Assembly.
“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,” the minister said on September 28.
“When this polity instills such fanaticism among its people, its GDP can only be measured in terms of radicalisation and its exports in the form of terrorism. Today we see the ills it sought to visit on others consume its own society. It can’t blame the world. This is only karma,” Jaishankar added in a strong statement.
In May last year, then-foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari had visited India to attend the two-day meeting of the SCO Council of Foreign Ministers.
He was the first Pakistani foreign minister to visit India in almost 12 years.