By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Foreign Minister, Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, is scheduled to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s (SCO) meeting in India next month, foreign office said on Thursday.
This will be the first visit by a senior foreign office representative from Pakistan to India since the ‘Heart of Asia’ conference in Amritsar in 2016, and marks the highest-level engagement between the two countries in seven years, despite the downgrading of diplomatic relations by Pakistan in 2019.
The visit comes after India revoked the special constitutional status of the disputed region of Kashmir, leading to concerns from Pakistan about India violating international law by attempting to alter the region’s Muslim-majority demographic.
Despite these tensions, Foreign Minister Bhutto-Zardari’s attendance at the SCO meeting reflects Pakistan’s commitment to the organization’s charter and processes, and the importance the country places on the region in its foreign policy priorities, foreign office spokesperson said.
“The Foreign Minister is attending the SCO CFM meeting at the invitation of the current Chair of SCO CFM, Dr. S. Jaishankar, Minister for External Affairs of the Republic of India,” said spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch at a weekly briefing.
“Pakistan’s participation in the meeting reflects its commitment to the SCO charter and processes and the importance that the country accords to the region in its foreign policy priorities.”
“Pakistan continues to participate in SCO meetings in keeping with our longstanding commitment to SCO,” Baloch added.
Pakistan and India continue to have rocky relations, though the upcoming visit by the Pakistani foreign minister to the neighboring country could be seen as a step towards normalization.
However, the foreign minister said the SCO rules and regulations clearly state that the forum is not to be used for raising bilateral matters.
The SCO is currently comprised of eight member countries (China, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan), four observer states interested in acceding to full membership (Afghanistan, Belarus, Iran, and Mongolia), and six “Dialogue Partners” (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Turkiye).
The organization, which was formed in 1996 as the Shanghai Five and became the SCO in 2001 with the addition of Uzbekistan, has expanded to become one of the largest multilateral organizations in the world, representing more than 30 percent of the world’s GDP and 40 percent of the world’s population, with the addition of India and Pakistan in 2017.
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