Ashish Ranjan
According to media reports on Wednesday, India has invited Pakistan’s Defense Minister Khawaja Asif to attend the April SCO meeting in New Delhi.Currently, India retains the presidency of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which consists of China, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.
As SCO President, India is scheduled to host a number of meetings.Tuesday, diplomatic sources told The Express Tribune that the Indian government extended an official invitation to the Pakistan Foreign Office.New Delhi provided no prompt confirmation of the Pakistani media report.According to the report, India invited Pakistan’s Chief Justice Umar Ata Bandial and shared an invitation for a summit of SCO foreign ministers.
However, the chief justice did not attend the recent meeting of the SCO chief justices; instead, Justice Muneeb Akhtar attended via video link.The meeting of foreign ministers is slated for May in Goa, while the meeting of defence ministers is scheduled for April in New Delhi.The Pakistani government has not yet decided whether Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari or Defense Minister Asif will attend the upcoming meetings in India.
India has invited Bilawal and China’s Qin Gang, among other foreign ministers of SCO member states, to the meeting it will host in May.According to the Pakistan Foreign Office, the decision will be made at the appropriate time.If the Pakistani foreign minister attends in person, it will be the first such visit to India from Islamabad since 2011. The foreign minister of Pakistan, Hina Rabbani Khar, visited India that year. Khar is the minister of state for foreign affairs at present.
In May 2014, the then-prime minister of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif, travelled to India to attend Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s inauguration.In December 2015, then-minister of external affairs Sushma Swaraj visited Pakistan, followed by a brief visit by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.After India’s warplanes bombed a Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist training camp in Pakistan’s Balakot in February 2019 in response to the Pulwama terror attack, relations between India and Pakistan were severely strained.
In August 2019, India proclaimed the withdrawal of Jammu and Kashmir’s special powers and the division of the former state into Union territories, which further strained relations.At a summit in Shanghai in 2001, the presidents of Russia, China, the Kyrgyz Republic, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan established the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).
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It has become one of the largest transregional international organisations over the years. In 2017, India and Pakistan became permanent members of the SCO based in Beijing.
