New Delhi: India on Friday had announced that External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar will travel to Pakistan to attend a conclave of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in mid-October.
EAM Jaishankar on Saturday clarified that his visit is strictly for the multilateral event, not for bilateral discussions on India-Pakistan relations. “I’m going there to be a good member of the SCO,” he said at the sidelines of an event in Delhi.
“But, you know, since I’m a courteous and civil person, I will behave myself accordingly,” he added.
This visit marks the first by an Indian minister to Pakistan in nearly a decade, the ties between the two neighbours remain frosty over the Kashmir issue and cross-border terrorism emanating from Pakistan.
Pakistan is hosting the SCO Council of Heads of Government (CHG) meeting on October 15 and 16.
The decision to send the senior minister is seen as a display of India’s commitment to the SCO which has been playing a key role in boosting regional security cooperation.
S. Jaishankaralso took a subtle jab at Pakistan, implying that the disruption of the SAARC initiative could be traced back to the actions of a specific country.
EAM S Jaishanka says, “At the moment SAARC is not moving forward, we haven’t had a meeting of SAARC for a very simple reason – there is one member of SAARC who is practising cross-border terrorism at least against one more member of SAARC, maybe more… Terrorism is something which is unacceptable and despite a global view of it if one of our neighbours continues to do it – there cannot be business as usual in SAARC. That’s the reason why the SAARC meeting has not happened in recent years – but it doesn’t mean that the regional activities have stopped. In fact, in the last 5-6 years, we have seen far more regional integration in the Indian subcontinent…”
The ties between India and Pakistan came under severe strain after India’s warplanes pounded a Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist training camp in Balakot in Pakistan in February 2019 in response to the Pulwama terror attack.
The relations further deteriorated after India on August 5, 2019 announced the withdrawal of special powers of Jammu and Kashmir and the bifurcation of the state into two union territories.
Pakistan downgraded diplomatic ties with India after New Delhi abrogated Article 370.
India has been maintaining that it desires normal neighbourly relations with Pakistan while insisting that the onus is on Islamabad to create an environment free of terror and hostility for such engagement.
Pakistan’s then foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari visited India in May 2023 to attend an in-person meeting of the foreign ministers of SCO nations in Goa.
It was the first visit of a Pakistani foreign minister to India in almost 12 years.
