India’s Foreign Minister visited Pakistan on Tuesday, marking the first visit by a top New Delhi official to the neighbouring country in nearly a decade, Indian media reported.
Subrahmanyam Jaishankar will travel to Islamabad for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit to “represent India at the meeting,” the foreign ministry said on Tuesday. Both sides said no bilateral talks were planned and Jaishankar’s visit would strictly follow the SCO schedule.
The two nuclear-armed countries are bitter adversaries who have fought numerous wars since they divided the subcontinent under British colonial rule in 1947.
The SCO comprises China, India, Russia, Pakistan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Belarus, with 16 other countries as observers or “dialogue partners.” The SCO is sometimes described as an alternative to the Western-dominated NATO military alliance. The Indian foreign ministry said in a statement:
“India remains actively engaged in the SCO format.”
While the SCO is mandated to discuss security issues, the Islamabad summit is expected to focus on trade, humanitarian and cultural issues.
The last time an Indian FM visited Pakistan was in 2015, when Sushma Swaraj attended a conference on Afghanistan.
Later that year, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a surprise visit to Lahore to meet his then counterpart Nawaz Sharif, raising hopes of warming relations with Pakistan.
Relations deteriorated sharply in 2019 when the Modi government cancelled the limited autonomy of Indian-administered Kashmir, forcing Pakistan to suspend bilateral trade and downgrade diplomatic ties with New Delhi. Kashmir, where a protracted and deadly insurgency against Indian rule continues, is divided between the two countries and is wholly owned by both.
Pakistan’s former Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari was in the Indian state of Goa in 2023 for the SCO meeting where he and Jaishankar had a verbal altercation.
