International: External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar will be visiting Pakistan to lead the Indian delegation at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) meeting on October 15-16, announced the Ministry of External Affairs on Friday. This would be Jaishankar's first visit to Pakistan as India's foreign minister, as Sushma Swaraj was the last EAM to visit Islamabad in 2015.

On Saturday, the minister put to rest speculation about India-Pakistan bilateral discussions in Islamabad, saying he is only going there for a multilateral visit and not to discuss the strained ties between the two neighbouring countries. 

"It (visit) will be for a multilateral event. I'm not going there to discuss India-Pakistan relations. I'm going there to be a good member of the SCO. But, you know, since I'm a courteous and civil person, I will behave myself accordingly," he said on Saturday.

Jaishankar's visit to Pakistan

The announcement of Jaishankar's Pakistan visit came after the ministry confirmed in August that Pakistan had sent an invitation to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to attend the SCO meeting. Pakistan holds the rotating chairmanship of the SCO Council of Heads of Government (CHG) and in that capacity, will be hosting the two-day in-person SCO Heads of Governments Meeting in October.

The SCO event in Pakistan will be preceded by a ministerial meeting and several rounds of senior officials’ meetings focused on financial, economic, socio-cultural, and humanitarian cooperation among the SCO member states. The SCO, comprising India, China, Russia, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, is an influential economic and security bloc that has emerged as one of the largest transregional international organisations.

India and Pakistan have a long history of strained relations, primarily due to the Kashmir issue as well as the cross-border terrorism emanating from Pakistan. India has been maintaining that it desires normal neighbourly relations with Pakistan while insisting that the onus is on Islamabad to create an environment that is free of terror and hostility. Pakistan downgraded its ties with India after the Indian Parliament abrogated Article 370 on August 5, 2019.

On several occasions, Jaishankar had issued tersely-worded statements accusing Pakistan of not doing enough to stem cross-border terrorism. At the recent UN General Assembly debate, he said Pakistan's cross-border terrorism will never succeed and its actions will "certainly have consequences", stressing that it is "karma" that the country's ills are now consuming its own society.