External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar clarified on Saturday that his upcoming visit to Islamabad is not intended to discuss “India-Pakistan relations” but to attend the 2024 SCO Summit being held in Pakistan, media reports said.
He emphasised that the trip is solely for participating in the multilateral event as part of his duties as a “good member of the SCO,” news agency ANI reported.
“Yes, I am scheduled to go to Pakistan in the middle of this month for the meeting of the SCO—the heads of government meeting,” Jaishankar said while delivering the Sardar Patel Lecture on Governance, organised by the IC Centre for Governance in New Delhi, the report said.
Acknowledging anticipated media interest due to the nature of India-Pakistan relations, Jaishankar reiterated, “I will be there for a multilateral event; I am not going there to discuss India-Pakistan relations. I am going there to be a good member of the SCO. Since I am a courteous and civil person, I will behave myself accordingly,” he stated.
He noted that the SCO Summit is being held in Islamabad this year because, like India, Pakistan is also a relatively recent member of the organisation.
“Normally, the Prime Minister attends the high-level meeting of heads of state, as per tradition. It so happens that the meeting is taking place in Pakistan,” Jaishankar explained.
When asked about his preparations for the summit, Jaishankar confirmed, “Of course, I am planning for it. In my business, you plan for everything you are going to do, and for a lot of things you are not going to do, and which could happen as well—you plan for that too.”
On Friday, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) announced Jaishankar’s upcoming trip to Pakistan for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit scheduled for October.
MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal confirmed, “EAM Jaishankar will lead a delegation to Pakistan to participate in the SCO summit, which will be held in Islamabad on October 15-16.”
Earlier, in August, India received an invitation from Pakistan to attend the SCO Council of Heads of Government (CHG) in-person meeting.
In May 2023, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari visited India for the SCO meeting in Goa, the first visit by a Pakistani Foreign Minister to India in six years.
The SCO is a permanent intergovernmental international organization, established on June 15, 2001, in Shanghai by Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, with its predecessor being the Shanghai Five.
Currently, the SCO has nine member states: India, Iran, Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan, along with three observer states: Afghanistan, Mongolia, and Belarus.
