Shah Mehmood Qureshi not to attend 1 March OIC meet if Sushma Swaraj will attend, say reports

Pakistan foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi has told his UAE counterpart that he will not be attending the foreign ministers’ conclave of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), if his Indian counterpart Sushma Swaraj was attending, reports have said. The meet is scheduled to be held in Abu Dhabi on 1 to 2 March. [caption id=“attachment_5237871” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] File image of Pakistan’s foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi. Reuters[/caption] According to a report from Times Now, Qureshi said that it “would not be possible for him to sit in OIC meet if India’s Sushma Swaraj attended it”. Qureshi had on Tuesday “ expressed reservations ” about the invitation to Swaraj to attend the OIC meeting. His comments came in the wake of India's air strikes inside Pakistan early Tuesday.  The strike is supposedly in response to the terror attack on a CRPF convoy in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pulwama district on 14 February. In a strategically significant development, Swaraj will attend the inaugural plenary of the foreign ministers’ conclave of the OIC, a powerful grouping of Muslim majority nations, as the ‘guest of honour’. The OIC has usually been supportive of Pakistan and, often sided with Islamabad on the Kashmir issue, PTI reported. In view of the tensions between India and Pakistan, the OIC Contact Group on Jammu and Kashmir held an emergency meeting at the OIC General Secretariat in Jeddah on Tuesday and called for immediate de-escalation. In a series of tweets, the OIC “called upon both parties to act responsibly, and encouraged them to seek a peaceful solution to current crisis without resort to use of force. It also called on them to embrace dialogue and work towards the de-escalation of the current situation as a matter of priority”. With inputs from agencies