External Affairs Minister (EAM) S. Jaishankar will head the Indian delegation at the forthcoming Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Council of Heads of Governments (CHG) slated to take place in Islamabad on October 15-16, the External Affairs Ministry (MEA) announced Friday.
"The External Affairs Minister will lead our delegation to Pakistan to participate in the SCO Summit which will be held in Islamabad," MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said during a weekly media briefing in New Delhi.
There is no information currently available about any bilateral engagements that EAM Jaishankar could hold during his visit to Pakistan, as the spokesperson explicitly mentioned.
The invite to the meet had come in the formal process from Pakistan for Prime Minister Narendra Modi .
Jaishankar's presence at the summit is understandable since the SCO meet is not obligatory for heads of states to attend and Indian ministerial delegations had attended in the past.
Extending an invitation to PM Modi and all other member states is a compulsive protocol any host country follows. Pakistan has done the same. I do not see this as a political stunt. However, I do not see PM Modi landing in Islamabad," political analyst Kamran Yousaf had told IANS in August this year.
Last year, Pakistan's Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari had visited India for the SCO Foreign Minister's meeting.
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