By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan will send Climate Change Minister Musadik Malik to New Delhi next week for the first Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Civilisational Dialogue, the Foreign Office (FO) announced on Saturday, 18 months after the two nuclear-armed neighbours fought a military conflict.
Malik will attend the gathering from 20 to 22 November. In a statement posted on X, the FO said it would bring representatives of SCO member states together to discuss civilisational dialogue and cultural understanding.
The FO said Islamabad remained committed to “dialogue among civilisations and fostering people-to-people contacts within the SCO framework”.
The forum is an Indian initiative. Alok Dimri, India’s SCO national coordinator, has said the idea was proposed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, after SCO leaders agreed in Bishkek to hold such a dialogue. Modi is due to open the meeting at Purana Qila in Delhi on 20 November, and it will launch a new SCO platform focused on culture and civilisational links rather than diplomacy and security.
Indian foreign ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal confirmed on Friday that several countries, including SCO members, had been invited. He said New Delhi looked forward to hosting the event. Indian news agency ANI reported that 10 SCO members, Pakistan among them, had been invited.
India has invited all SCO members, dialogue partners and one observer, with more than 25 countries expected at the venue.
Indian media reported last month that the invitation had been addressed to Aurangzeb Khan Khichi, Pakistan’s minister for national heritage and culture. India’s culture minister, Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, said he hoped Islamabad would take part.
The nomination follows last month’s meeting of the SCO Council of National Coordinators in Islamabad, which Pakistan chaired. Dimri, who is also an additional secretary at India’s Ministry of External Affairs, attended.
A video released by the FO showed him shaking hands warmly with Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar. He was later seen standing between Dar and Pakistan’s national coordinator for the SCO, Dr Muhammad Faisal. The images were strikingly cordial given the state of relations, and the two sides had only recently traded barbs at the UN General Assembly in New York.
Dimri’s trip was nonetheless one of the more significant instances of Indian participation in an SCO meeting hosted by Pakistan. India has maintained that bilateral engagement with Islamabad needs a conducive environment, but it has kept taking part in the group’s multilateral processes.
“This is my first time on Pakistani soil,” Dimri told PTV News. He said SCO programmes would continue through the year and culminate in the Islamabad summit.
Pakistan is due to host the next SCO Council of Heads of State meeting in August 2027.
There is a precedent for such contact. Jaishankar travelled to Islamabad in October 2024 for the SCO Council of Heads of Government meeting, the first visit by an Indian foreign minister in nearly a decade. He went months before the May 2025 conflict escalated tensions.
In May 2023, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, then Pakistan’s foreign minister, led his country’s delegation to an SCO foreign ministers’ meeting in Goa. It was the first visit to India by a Pakistani foreign minister since 2011.
Islamabad has long been active in the organisation. It holds the permanent chairmanship of an SCO working group on poverty alleviation, and it has chaired the group’s Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure since September 2025.
Earlier this month, Pakistan also took the chair of the SCO Interbank Consortium for 2026-27, with HBL chairman Sultan Ali Allana taking charge. The ministry said the appointment coincided with Pakistan’s SCO chairmanship and reflected its role in promoting regional trade, investment and financial connectivity.
Pakistan has moved from observer status to active full membership since joining in 2017. The grouping has broadened its focus from security to economic development and regional connectivity.
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