Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar will visit Pakistan to participate in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) on 15-16 October, making the first such Indian trip to Delhi’s arch-foe in nearly a decade.

“The external affairs minister will lead a delegation to Pakistan to participate in the SCO Summit which will be held on October 15 and 16,” Indian foreign ministry spokesman Randhir Jaiswal said at a weekly press briefing on Friday.

Earlier, Pakistan’s Foreign Office (FO) had confirmed that Prime Minister Modi has been invited to the SCO Council of Heads of Government meeting, which Pakistan is hosting on 15-16 Oct, under its rotating chairmanship.

Meanwhile, a comprehensive security plan for the upcoming SCO summit was approved on Wednesday at a meeting chaired by Federal Minister for Interior Mohsin Naqvi.

Over the past decade, India maintained a record of avoiding meetings in Pakistan. The practice started with Delhi’s boycott of the Pakistan-hosted 19th SAARC Summit in November 2016, which has left the regional body into a limbo.

India’s change of mind this year can be attributed to Pakistan joining an SCO event last year. Pakistan’s then-foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari made the trip to SCO foreign ministers’ event in May 2023, becoming the first of his rank to do so in 12 years.

Back in Pakistan, the trip was hailed as “productive and positive”.

However, India would not be sending its Prime Minister Narendra Modi to this year’s SCO leaders’ event, which will be hosted in Islamabad, for unconfirmed reasons.

Source: DAWN