Pakistan on Monday ruled out talks with India on bilateral issues during the upcoming visit of External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar to Islamabad to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit.
India on Friday announced that Jaishankar would lead a delegation to Pakistan to participate in the SCO summit in Islamabad. However, Jaishankar ruled out chances of bilateral talks during his visit to Pakistan.
Pakistan will host the 23rd Council of Heads of Government of the SCO member States from October 15 to 16 in Islamabad, said a spokesperson for the Foreign Office, Mumtaz Zahra Baloch.
Responding to a query about the visit of Jaishankar and India-Pakistan ties, she said Pakistan received "intimation officially with regards to this visit" and was prepared to welcome all members.
Regarding your question about bilateral meetings, I would like you to refer to the remarks made by the Indian Minister for External Affairs on 5th of October, in which he maintained that his visit was meant for a multilateral event and not for discussing Pakistan-India relations. These remarks are self-explanatory, she said.
This was the first visit by an Indian minister of state for external affairs to Pakistan in five years, since the assassination of Pakistani leader Benazir Bhutto in 2007. The last Indian external affairs minister who visited Pakistan was Sushma Swaraj. She had gone to Islamabad in December 2015 to attend a conference on Afghanistan.
Jaishankar's visit to Pakistan assumes significance as this is being seen as a major decision on New Delhi's part.
India-Pakistan ties suffered a severe blow when India' war planes pounded a Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist training camp in Balakot in Pakistan in February 2019 in response to the Pulwama terror attack.
The relations further deteriorated after India on August 5, 2019, announced the withdrawal of special powers of Jammu and Kashmir and the bifurcation of the state into two union territories.
Pakistan has downgraded diplomatic relations with India after New Delhi cancelled Article 370.
India claims it wants normal neighborly relations with Pakistan but expects Islamabad to create an environment free of terror and hostility to allow that kind of engagement.
Pakistan's then foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari went to India in May 2023. He attended an in-person meeting of the foreign ministers of SCO nations in Goa. It was the first visit by a Pakistani foreign minister to India in almost 12 years.
Giving details of the SCO meeting, Baloch said that Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif will preside over the upcoming CHG Meeting.
"We expect high-level participation from SCO members; observer state of Mongolia; Turkmenistan as a special guest; and representatives of the international organisations, including Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA), Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and European Economic Community (EEC)," she said.
She said that the meeting of CHG will deliberate cooperation in the fields of economy, trade, environment, and socio-cultural linkages besides reviewing the performance of the Organisation. The leaders will adopt important organisational decisions to further enhance cooperation among SCO member States and approve the grouping's budget.
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