ISLAMABAD: Indian External Affairs Minister Dr S Jaishankar will visit Pakistan on October 15 to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit.

This will be the first visit for an Indian Minister for External Affairs since 2015, when Indian External Minister late Sushma Swaraj attended a security conference on Afghanistan in Islamabad and held meetings with senior officials and politicians.

On Friday, the spokesperson at the Ministry of External Affairs, Randhir Jaiswal told a media briefing, “EAM Jaishankar will lead a delegation to Pakistan for the SCO summit which will be held in Islamabad on 15th and 16th October.“

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Islamabad had announced that it had on August 26, sent a formal invitation to the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the summit meeting of the heads of state and government of the SCO, scheduled in October in Islamabad.

The invite to Modi from Pakistan was made after eight years when he had been invited for a SAARC summit in Islamabad but one that he boycotted, leaving the regional grouping in limbo.

Modi seldom attends these SCO meetings and even in the past has been represented by his External Minister.

Pakistan at present holds the rotating chairmanship of “one of the largest trans-regional international organisations,“ will see the SCO preceded by a ministerial meeting and several rounds of senior officials meetings.

“Though Jaishankar’s visit to Pakistan is about multilateral diplomacy more than bilateral relations, the significance for India-Pakistan ties shouldn’t be overlooked. The decision is undoubtedly motivated more by India’s commitment to the SCO than to a desire to move the needle forward on relations with Pakistan,” commented Michael Kugelman, Director, South Asia Institute.

The SCO which includes India, China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Iran and Uzbekistan with India and Pakistan joining the group in 2017.

Heads of state and government are expected in Islamabad but the Foreign Office says it will make public the list when all acceptances have been made.

Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif attended the May 2023 SCO meeting in Goa by video link.

The then foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari had visited India to attend the two-day meeting of the SCO Council of Foreign Ministers, becoming the first Pakistani foreign minister to visit India in almost 12 years.

Bilawal did not hold a bilateral meeting with his India counterpart and reports from Delhi indicating that it is unlikely that Jaishankar will hold any bilateral meeting with Pakistani officials.