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FM Bilawal to attend SCO meeting in India, first Pakistani official visit in 9 years

Two-day meeting will take place in Goa on May 4
Photo: AFP
Photo: AFP

Pakistan’s foreign minister will attend a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in India next month, his ministry said on Thursday, in what will be the first visit by a top Pakistani government official to India in nearly a decade.

Relations between the nuclear-armed neighbours have been fraught for years and they have fought three wars, two of them over the Muslim-majority Himalayan region of Kashmir, which they both claim in full but rule in part.

Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari will attend a meeting of foreign ministers from the SCO in the Indian state of Goa on May 4 and 5, the ministry said.

It will be the first visit to India by a top Pakistani since then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif attended Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s swearing-in in 2014.

Bhutto-Zardari is the son of assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto and a former president, Asif Ali Zardari.

Relations between the nuclear-armed nations have been chilly at best ever since they were created out of the partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947.

Their conflict over Kashmir has resulted in three full-fledged wars and numerous minor skirmishes.

The most recent visit to India by a high-ranking Pakistan diplomat was in 2016 when Sartaj Aziz – then the senior adviser to the prime minister on foreign affairs – travelled to New Delhi.

India currently holds the rotating presidency of the SCO, which was established in 2001 and is considered a political, economic, and security organisation to rival Western institutions.

“Our participation in the meeting reflects Pakistan’s commitment to the SCO Charter and processes and the importance that Pakistan accords to the region in its foreign policy priorities,” said FO spokeswoman Mumtaz Zahra Baloch.

The SCO is an eight-member political and security bloc that includes Russia and China.

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Pakistan

SCO

Bilawal Bhutto Zardari

Bilawal Bhutto