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India FM arrives in Islamabad on rare visit as SCO summit gets underway

News Desk
Wednesday, Oct 16, 2024

ISLAMABAD: Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar arrived in Islamabad on Tuesday for a Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit, the first top Delhi diplomat to visit Pakistan in nearly a decade.

Jaishankar is among nearly a dozen leaders participating in the 23rd meeting of the SCO’s Council of Heads of Government (CHG). The two-day gathering will culminate with the main event today (Wednesday).

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif will preside over the high-level meeting, which will see the participation of prime ministers and high-ranking officials from the SCO member states, including Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and the First Vice President of Iran.

As the delegates from participating countries arrived, the federal capital received a facelift with colourful lights, floral decorations, and flags and banners from SCO member states to welcome the dignitaries. Children dressed in traditional attire presented bouquets to the foreign dignitaries.

Jaishankar’s plane landed just before 3:30pm at an airbase near Islamabad, a foreign office official said on Tuesday, as state TV showed him receiving a bouquet of flowers from a host delegation.

Relations between India and Pakistan have been particularly sour since 2019, when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi revoked the limited autonomy of Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir. Modi’s 2019 move led Pakistan to suspend bilateral trade and downgrade diplomatic ties with New Delhi.

Indian government spokesman Randhir Jaiswal said this month the agenda of Jaishankar’s visit would strictly follow the SCO schedule, which is due to discuss trade, humanitarian and social issues. “The Indian foreign minister has not requested a bilateral meeting, nor have we extended an invitation to them,” Pakistan Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said on Sunday.

Former Indian foreign minister Sushma Swaraj was the last to visit Pakistan in 2015, arriving for a summit on Afghanistan. Modi also made a surprise visit to Pakistan that year, shortly after taking office for his first term, sparking short-lived hopes of a thaw in relations.

The SCO is a block of 10 nations established by China and Russia, which have used the alliance to deepen their ties with Central Asian states and vie for influence in the region. However, they have recently pitched the organisation as a competitor to the West. The bloc represents 40 percent of the world’s population and about 30 percent ofits GDP. Pakistan’s former foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari was in Goa last year — also a rare visit — for an SCO meeting where he and Jaishankar were involved in a verbal spat.

It was the first official visit by a senior Pakistani official to their eastern neighbour since 2016, but the two foreign ministers did not hold a one-on-one meeting.The SCO comprises Pakistan, China, India, Russia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Belarus — with 16 more countries affiliated as observers or “dialogue partners”. The SCO is sometimes touted as an alternative to the Western-dominated Nato military alliance.