Visit should not be seen as…: Pak minister on attending SCO meeting in India

By India Today World Desk: Pakistan Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said his participation in a gathering of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Council in India shows Islamabad’s dedication to the structure of the SCO. The Pakistan minister said his go to to India should not be seen relating to bilateral ties, Dunya News quoted Bhutto as saying.

“We are committed to the SCO charter and this visit should not be seen as a bilateral one but in the context of the SCO,” the minister said.

Pakistan on Thursday said that Bilawal Bhutto Zardari would journey to India subsequent month to attend the SCO meeting in Goa to be held in May. “Bilawal Bhutto Zardari will be leading the Pakistan delegation to the SCO Council of Foreign Ministers (CFM) being held on May 4-5, 2023, in Goa, India,” Foreign Office spokesperson Mumtaz Zahrah Baloch launched at a weekly media briefing.

Mumtaz Zahra Baloch said Bilawal Bhutto Zardari might be attending the SCO Council of Foreign Ministers meeting on the invitation of Minister for External Affairs of India, Dr S Jaishakar.

Bilawal Bhutto Zardari’s go to might be the first by any Pakistani Foreign Minister since Hina Rabbani Khar’s in 2011. It would even be the first high-level go to by a Pakistani official since Nawaz Sharif’s journey to India in 2014 for the swearing-in ceremony of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Arindam Bagchi, nonetheless, said comparable invitations have been extended to all SCO member states. He said,”It would not be really appropriate to look at participation by any one particular country”.

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India has formally despatched invitations to all members of the SCO along with Pakistan and China for the upcoming worldwide ministers’ meeting. India took over the chairmanship of the 9-member mega grouping in September closing yr and can possible be holding key ministerial conferences and the summit this yr.

The organisation has Russia, India, China, Pakistan, and 4 central Asian nations – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan as its members. The closing meeting of the SCO was held in Samarkand, Uzbekistan and it was attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The ties between India and Pakistan bought right here beneath excessive strain after India’s warplanes pounded a Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist teaching camp in Pakistan’s Balakot in February 2019 in response to the Pulwama terror assault.

The relations further deteriorated after India launched the withdrawal of Jammu and Kashmir’s explicit powers and the bifurcation of the erstwhile state into Union territories in August 2019.

(With PTI inputs)

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