By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Deputy prime minister and foreign minister, Ishaq Dar, is leading the country’s delegation at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s Council of Heads of Government meeting in Moscow, a gathering that will once again place Pakistani and Indian officials in the same room six months after their brief but deadly military clash beyond the Line of Control.
The Foreign Office said Dar would deliver Pakistan’s formal address to the SCO-CHG and hold a series of bilateral meetings on the sidelines with counterparts from other member and partner states. “In his address to the SCO CHG, the deputy prime minister will share Pakistan’s perspective on important regional and global issues as well as ways to strengthen the Organization for the benefit of the SCO region,” the ministry said in a statement.
The two-day meeting, which opens Monday and concludes Tuesday, is the SCO’s principal forum for economic and socio-cultural cooperation. Heads of government from the seven full members, China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Belarus are expected to attend. Iran will be represented by its vice president, while India will send its external affairs minister. Pakistan, as host of last year’s CHG meeting, is dispatching Dar in place of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.
Observer states and dialogue partners will also be present in force. Mongolia will send its prime minister; Bahrain, Egypt, Qatar and Kuwait will be represented at head-of-government level; and Turkmenistan will be in attendance. Senior representatives from the Commonwealth of Independent States, the Eurasian Economic Union and the Collective Security Treaty Organization have also been invited.
This will mark the second SCO summit this year at which Pakistani and Indian representatives have appeared together since the May 7-10 military confrontation that killed more than 70 soldiers and civilians on both sides and brought the nuclear-armed neighbors to the brink of a wider war. A ceasefire brokered by the United States took effect on May 10. Three months later, Sharif and India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, both took part in the SCO heads-of-state summit hosted by China. Pakistan hosted the previous Council of Heads of Government meeting in Islamabad in October 2024, an event attended by premiers and senior officials from across the SCO’s expanding membership and partnership network.
The SCO, founded in 2001 by China, Russia and four Central Asian republics and later joined by India and Pakistan in 2017, Iran in 2023 and Belarus this year, describes itself as a forum for political, economic, security and cultural cooperation across Eurasia. The Council of Heads of Government is its second-highest decision-making body after the heads-of-state council and is charged with approving the organization’s budget and overseeing practical cooperation in trade, transport, energy, agriculture and other non-security fields.
Dar’s participation comes as Pakistan seeks to deepen ties with its traditional allies China and Russia while navigating strained relations with New Delhi and a complicated relationship with Kabul. Officials in Islamabad have stressed that the SCO offers a neutral platform for dialogue even during periods of high bilateral tension with India, which remains a full SCO member despite occasional reluctance to attend Pakistan-hosted events at the highest level. No agenda has been publicly released, but SCO summits routinely produce joint statements on regional connectivity, counterterrorism and economic integration, issues that have taken on added urgency for cash-strapped Pakistan as it pursues Chinese-backed infrastructure projects and attempts to stabilise its economy.
Copyright © 2021 Independent Pakistan | All rights reserved
