NEW DELHI: The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) on Friday said that External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar will be travelling to Pakistan to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit scheduled to take place in October.
On being asked about India’s participation in the upcoming SCO Summit, MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said, “EAM Jaishankar will lead a delegation to Pakistan to participate in the SCO summit which will be held in Islamabad on October 15-16…”
In August, India received an invitation from Pakistan for the SCO Council of Heads of Government (CHG) in-person meeting.
Jaiswal, while addressing a weekly media briefing on August 30, confirmed the invitation by Islamabad. Responding to a question at the briefing, Jaiswal had said, “Yes, we have received an invitation from Pakistan for the Council of Heads of State Government meeting (SCO meeting) that is to happen. We don’t have an update on that. We will let you know what the situation is later.”
Earlier in May 2023, Pakistan Foreign Minister Billawal Bhutto Zardari had visited India for the SCO meeting in Goa. This was the first visit by a Foreign Minister of Pakistan to India in six years.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation is a permanent intergovernmental international organisation established on June 15, 2001, in Shanghai by Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.
Its predecessor was the mechanism of the Shanghai Five. Currently, the SCO countries include nine member states: India, Iran, Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.The SCO has three observer states: Afghanistan, Mongolia and Belarus.
At the Samarkand SCO Summit in 2022, the process of raising the status of the Republic of Belarus within the Organisation to the level of a member state started.
The SCO has 14 dialogue partners — Azerbaijan, Armenia, Bahrain, Egypt, Cambodia, Qatar, Kuwait, the Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Turkiye and Sri Lanka. (ANI)