New Delhi. Foreign Minister S Jaishankar will visit Pakistan this month. He will go to Pakistan on a two-day visit on October 15 to attend the meeting of Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Sushma Swaraj was the last Foreign Minister of India to visit Pakistan. It will be nine years after his visit in 2015 that an Indian Foreign Minister will visit Pakistan. However, there will be no bilateral talks between India and Pakistan during this period. SCO is a multilateral forum, whose meetings are held in member countries.
This time the meeting is being hosted by Pakistan in Islamabad, in which Pakistan had invited India to participate. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said on Friday, October 4 that Jaishankar will visit Pakistan and attend the meeting of heads of state. When asked whether the visit of the External Affairs Minister was seen as a step towards improving relations with Pakistan, in the press conference of the Ministry of External Affairs, spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said that India is committed to the SCO charter. This is the reason for the visit of the Foreign Minister. No other meaning should be taken from this.
It is noteworthy that Pakistan had invited Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the SCO meeting on August 29. Pakistan’s Foreign Department spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch had said that invitations have been sent to the heads of all member countries to participate in the meeting. However, on August 30, a day after the invitation from Pakistan, Jaishankar had given a statement on the relations between the two countries. He had said- The phase of talks with Pakistan is over. There is a time for everything, every work reaches its end. Article 370 has been removed from Jammu and Kashmir, the issue is over. Now why should we consider any relationship with Pakistan?
In the press conference of the Ministry of External Affairs on Friday, Randhir Jaiswal also talked about Zakir Naik arriving in Pakistan, Maldives President Muizzu’s visit to India, tension in the Middle East and issues related to the security of Indians living there. However, last time Sushma Swaraj visited Pakistan. India’s then External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj visited Pakistan in December 2015 after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s surprise visit to Lahore. Since his visit, no Prime Minister or Minister of India has visited Pakistan.