Dr. S Jaishankar will travel to Pakistan: Foreign Ministry

It has been announced that India’s External Affairs minister Dr S Jaishankar will be attending the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) meeting in Pakistan.

Speaking at a presser, the MEA informed, “The External Affairs Minister will lead our delegation to Pakistan to participate in the SCO summit which will be held in Islamabad on 15 and 16 October. EAM is leading a delegation what will be his plans like closer to the meeting we will share.” This would mark Jaishankar’s first visit to Pakistan as foreign minister of India. No Indian foreign minister has visited the country since December 2015.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) is a Eurasian political, economic, international security and defence organization. It is the world’s largest regional organization in terms of geographic scope and population. Current members include India, China, Russia, Iran and Pakistan among others.

India hosted the SCO Summit last year, organised in a virtual mode, and attended by Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif through a video link. However, Pakistan’s then foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari visited India in May 2023 to attend an in-person two-day meet of the SCO Council of Foreign Ministers in Goa, which marked the first visit from a Pakistani foreign minister to India in almost 12 years.

Pakistan currently 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. It had invited Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the summit but EAM Dr S Jaishankar will be attending the event in his stead.

So far the Narendra Modi Government has upheld a tough policy towards Islamabad asserting that terror and talks cannot go together. Now it remains to be seen whether this new development would give a new trajectory to India’s diplomatic relations with Pakistan or whether the visit will be undertaken merely in respect of the global grouping.