S Jaishankar To Visit Pak, First Foreign Minister There Since Sushma Swaraj

S Jaishankar will visit Pakistan later this month to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, becoming the first External Affairs Minister to do so in nine years. The last visit was by Sushma Swaraj in 2015. 

External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said on Friday that Mr Jaishankar will lead a delegation to Pakistan to attend a Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Council of Heads of Government meeting. 

"The External Affairs Minister will lead our delegation to Pakistan to participate in the SCO summit which will be held in Islamabad on October 15 and 16," Mr Jaiswal said, emphasising that the visit will be limited to attending the summit. Pakistan had invited Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the meeting in August. 

The decision to send Mr Jaishankar to Pakistan for the summit is being seen as a major one by the Union government given the chill in ties between the two countries since the Pulwama terrorist attack in February 2019, which was followed by the Balakot air strikes, in which India targeted a Jaish-e-Mohammed training camp. The relationship got even more strained after Pakistan vociferously opposed India's removal of Article 370, which granted special status to Jammu and Kashmir. 

India has repeatedly slammed Pakistan's interference on the issue and reiterated that it is an internal matter. 

Addressing the United Nations General Assembly last week, Mr Jaishankar had warned Pakistan that its policy of cross-border terrorism could never succeed and also alluded to its economic crisis. 

"Many countries get left behind due to circumstances beyond their control. But some make conscious choices with disastrous consequences. A premier example is our neighbour, Pakistan. Unfortunately, their misdeeds affect others as well, especially the neighbourhood," the minister said. 

Display Of Commitment

Given all of this, the fact that Mr Jaishankar will attend the summit in the country is being seen as a display of India's commitment to the SCO which, it believes, has been playing a vital role in boosting regional security cooperation. Sushma Swaraj had visited Pakistan in 2015 to attend a conference on Afghanistan. 

Apart from India, the SCO has China, Russia, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan as member countries and is an influential economic and security bloc as well as one of the largest transregional international organisations.

The SCO was founded at a summit in Shanghai in 2001 by the presidents of Russia, China, the Kyrgyz Republic, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan and India was an observer country for the first time in 2005. It became a permanent member, along with Pakistan, in 2017. 

India was the chair of the organisation in 2023 and hosted the SCO summit in the virtual format in July of that year.

The SCO Council of Heads of Government conclave, which Mr Jaishankar will be attending, is the second-highest platform in the grouping while the Heads of State Summit is the top-most forum and is generally attended by the Prime Minister.