Tuesday marks the first trip to Pakistan for a summit by India’s top envoy, which comes from New Delhi, to the country’s bitterly hostile neighbour in almost ten years.
Subrahmanyam Jaishankar will “represent India at the meeting” at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Islamabad, the foreign ministry announced on Tuesday.
According to both parties, there are no plans for bilateral meetings, and Jaishankar’s visit will adhere exclusively to the SCO agenda.
Since the two nuclear-armed countries were split apart in 1947 as a result of British colonial control, they have been fierce enemies and have fought numerous wars.
The SCO comprises China, India, Russia, Pakistan, 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.
“India remains actively engaged in the SCO format,” India’s foreign ministry said.
The Islamabad meeting is expected to concentrate on commerce, humanitarian, and cultural matters, even though the SCO is mandated to handle security.
When Sushma Swaraj travelled to Pakistan in 2015 to attend an Afghanistan conference, it was the last time an Indian foreign minister had been there.
In the same year, there were expectations of a thaw in relations with Pakistan after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made an unexpected trip to Lahore to speak with his counterpart Nawaz Sharif.
However, relationships broke bad in 2019 as the little autonomy of Indian-administered Kashmir was removed by Modi’s government, which prompted Pakistan to cut diplomatic ties and halt bilateral trade with New Delhi.The Himalayan region, home to a long-running and deadly insurgency against Indian rule, is divided between the two countries and claimed by both in full.
Pakistan’s former foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari was in India’s Goa in 2023 — also a rare visit — for an SCO meeting where he and Jaishankar were involved in a verbal spat.
The two did not hold a one-on-one meeting.
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