India’s Minister for External Affairs Subrahmanyam Jaishankar will be in Pakistan next week to attend the upcoming Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Islamabad, scheduled for October 15-16.
This is going to be the first visit of any Indian foreign affairs minister to Pakistan in nine years. Pakistan is hosting the summit as part of its rotating chairmanship of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
Founded by China, Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan in 2001, the now-10-member organization has been focusing on Central Asian issues and trying to resolve them. Both Pakistan and India joined the group as full members in 2017, but tensions kept them apart even in this forum.
India’s Ministry of External Affairs confirmed last Friday that Subrahmanyam Jaishankar would be visiting Pakistan, leading a delegation for the summit. This visit will make him the highest-ranking Indian official to visit Pakistan since 2015.
Last year, Minister for Foreign Affairs Bilawal Bhutto had visited India to attend a similar meeting, hence becoming the first senior Pakistani leader to have visited India since 2011. Despite strained relations, both Pakistan and India have tried to maintain a formal presence at such multilateral gatherings.
Since Pakistan is holding this year’s summit, Islamabad extended invitations to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Subrahmanyam Jaishankar. Analysts on both sides of the border are cautious about reading too much into the visit.
The Indian side has made it clear that there would be ‘no’ talks aimed at resolving the long-standing disputes between the two countries during this meeting. It may be mentioned here that since 1947, India has had 29 foreign ministers, but only a handful of them visited Pakistan.
The journey began in 1978, when Atal Bihari Vajpayee became the first Indian external affairs minister to have visited the country. He served under prime minister Morarji Desai at that time, and the purpose of that visit was solely to improve diplomatic relations.
It then took 11 years for the next Indian foreign affairs minister to follow suit, as Inder Kumar Gujral visited Pakistan in 1989. Then, after a decade, Jaswant Singh visited the country for peace talks in 1999, which was followed by Natwar Singh’s trip in 2005 for diplomatic talks.
SM Krishna’s visit in 2012 was also a significant one, which was part of efforts to improve bilateral relations. However, Sushma Swaraj was the last Indian foreign minister to have visited Pakistan, as stalled talks were resumed in 2015 to promote regional peace amid the chaos in Afghanistan.
Pakistan has made elaborate security preparations for the upcoming summit. For this purpose, Interior Affairs Minister Mohsin Naqvi had chaired a high-level meeting last week to approve a comprehensive security plan for the event.
Under this plan, personnel from the Pakistan Army, Rangers, Frontier Corps (FC), as well as the Punjab Police will man the capital to ensure the safety of delegates and participants. Interestingly, some reports suggest that Mohsin Naqvi, who is also the chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB), may meet with the visiting Indian minister during the visit to discuss sporting ties between the two countries.
He is also expected to extend an invitation to the Indian foreign minister to attend the 2025 ICC Champions Trophy, which Pakistan is set to host. In case that happens, it will serve as an icebreaker between the two nations in the realm of sports diplomacy.