NEW DELHI: India’s Foreign Minister will visit Pakistan later this month to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit, a government spokesperson announced on Friday, marking a rare trip by a senior official from New Delhi.
The SCO meeting is set to take place in Pakistan’s capital on October 15-16. According to the spokesperson for the Indian Ministry of External Affairs, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar will be the first Indian foreign minister to visit Pakistan in nearly a decade.
India and Pakistan have a long history of political tensions, having fought three wars and numerous smaller skirmishes since their partition in 1947.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a surprise visit to Pakistan in 2015 shortly after taking office, raising hopes for improved relations. However, ties deteriorated again in 2019 when Modi revoked the limited autonomy of Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK), a move that sparked widespread condemnation and led Pakistan to suspend bilateral trade and downgrade diplomatic relations with India.
In May of last year, then-Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari visited India for the SCO Council of Foreign Ministers meeting, marking the first visit by a senior Pakistani official since then-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif attended Modi’s swearing-in ceremony in 2014.
“The agenda of the visit is solely the SCO summit,” government spokesman Randhir Jaiswal stated at a news conference, emphasizing that there should be no expectation of significant developments regarding the two countries’ relations. The Indian ministry also said that details about potential bilateral meetings in Pakistan would be shared in the coming days.
The SCO is a coalition of 10 nations formed by China and Russia, which has historically aimed to strengthen ties with Central Asian states while competing for influence in the region. Recently, the organization has increasingly positioned itself as a counter to Western influence.
The bloc claims to represent 40 percent of the world’s population and about 30 percent of global GDP, though its members have diverse political systems and often experience open disagreements.
Pakistan’s former foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari attended an SCO meeting in Goa last year—another rare visit—during which he and Jaishankar had a verbal exchange but did not hold a one-on-one meeting.
Experts suggest that India’s decision to attend the summit reflects its commitment to the SCO rather than a genuine desire to improve relations with Pakistan.
Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Center in Washington, stated, “India’s attendance is undoubtedly motivated more by its commitment to the SCO than by a desire to advance relations with Pakistan.”
