With diplomatic ties between the two nuclear powers remaining frosty, a visit by an Indian politician to Pakistan is a rare occurrence. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit is taking place in Islamabad.
India’s foreign minister is traveled to Pakistan on Tuesday, marking the first visit by New Delhi’s top envoy to its neighbor in nearly a decade.
Subrahmanyam Jaishankar is in Islamabad for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit.
Both sides have said no bilateral talks are planned, and Jaishankar’s visit would strictly follow the SCO schedule.
“India remains actively engaged in the SCO format,” India’s Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday morning. It added that Jaishankar will travel to the summit to “represent India at the meeting.”
The SCO comprises China, India, Russia, Pakistan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Belarus. A further 16 countries are affiliated as observers or “dialogue partners”.
With the SCO sometimes viewed as an alternative to the Western-dominated NATO military alliance, it has a mandate to discuss security. However, the Islamabad summit is due to focus on trade, humanitarian and cultural issues.
Souring of ties after hopes of better relations
The last time an Indian foreign minister visited Pakistan was in 2015 when Sushma Swaraj attended a conference on Afghanistan.
Later that year, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a surprise visit to Lahore to meet his then-counterpart Nawaz Sharif, sparking hopes of a warming in relations with Pakistan.
Relations plummeted in 2019 when Modi’s government revoked the limited autonomy of Indian-administered Kashmir, leading Pakistan to suspend bilateral trade and downgrade diplomatic ties with New Delhi.
Kashmir, home to a long-running and deadly insurgency against Indian rule, is divided between the two countries and claimed by both in full.
Pakistan’s former foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari was in the Indian state of Goa in 2023 for an SCO meeting, where he and Jaishankar were involved in a verbal spat.
