Pakistan invites PM Modi to SCO summit in Islamabad amid tension in J&K

As Pakistan gears up to host the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit, reports are emerging that the country has invited Prime Minister Narendra Modi along with other world leaders for the international event. Pakistan is slated to host the SCO leaders for the Council of Heads of Government (CHG) in-person meeting in October this year.

While it is believed that the Prime Minister will likely skip the event, it will be interesting to see if he would depute a minister to represent India and attend the event.

Islamabad is scheduled to host the meeting on October 15-16, since it holds the rotating chairmanship of the CHG, the second highest decision-making body in the Eurasian group after the Council of Heads of State.

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It is pertinent to note that the Prime Minister has also skipped the CHG meeting in Kazakhstan this year as well since it clashed with the July session of the parliament. Last year, External Affairs Minister Dr S. Jaishankar attended the CHG meeting in Bishkek. It is also not clear if India will be allowed to address the meeting virtually if none of the representatives attend the meeting in Pakistan.

Both India and Pakistan are full-time members of the group led by Russia and China. However, India remains wary of the group’s anti-west platform. In light of this, India has never endorsed China’s Belt and Road Initiative in the SCO joint statement. Despite all this, SCO is the only multilateral forum where India and Pakistan have managed to work together.

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Pakistan’s then-Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari visited India last year, for a SCO foreign ministers’ meeting. One of the main reasons why both nations managed to cooperate with each other in these summits is because the SCO charter doesn’t allow member-states to raise bilateral issues.

Multiple factors can lead to India skipping the event altogether. One of them is the recent terror attacks in Jammu and Kashmir. Meanwhile, since 2019, Pakistan has expressed discontent over the abrogation of Article 370. The last Indian foreign minister who visited Pakistan was Late Sushma Swaraj, who went to Islamabad in 2015.

With inputs from agencies.