S. Jaishankar, the Indian prime minister, has been given the opportunity to speak at a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO ) in Pakistan this month.
A senior Indian minister did make his second trip to Pakistan in almost ten years.
The trip comes after Mr Jaishankar’s Pakistani counterpart attended a similar meeting of foreign ministers from the SCO in India last year – he was the first senior Pakistani politician to visit since 2011.
Since 1947, the nuclear-armed neighbors have engaged in three warfare, two of which have involved the Himalayan region of Kashmir.
A social group of nations was established to discuss security and economic issues in Central Asia.
China, Russia, and four Central Asian nations joined forces in 2001 to try to restrain the influence of Western allies like NATO.
In 2017, Pakistan and India both joined the group.
While India chaired the SCO in 2023, Pakistan will become hosting this week’s summit from 15 October to 16 October.
Randhir Jaiswal, a spokesman for India’s foreign ministry, confirmed that Mr. Jaishankar will lead the American delegation to Pakistan at a press conference on Friday.
The last time an Indian foreign minister visited the nation was in 2015, when Sushma Swaraj attended a security conference in Islamabad and held rare talks with Pakistani officials.
Days later, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi also made a surprise trip to Lahore where he met then Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
After a violent attack on American soldiers in Indian-administered Kashmir, India and Pakistan’s relations have always been strained, but they recently reached a new low when they launched strikes on Pakistani territory in 2019.
Both India and Pakistan both assert whole sovereignty over Kashmir, but they only have some control over it. In the past three decades, dissident insurrection has resulted in hundreds of fatalities in Indian-administered Kashmir. Pakistan’s neighbor disputes that India supports rebels.
When Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari traveled to India’s Goa for a SCO meeting next time, it seemed like a melting of relations was on the cards.
However, Mr. Zardari claimed that he and Mr. Jaishankar had no immediate contact with him while on his journey and that his attend was “focused solely on the SCO.”
In an interview with the BBC at that time, he said that the onus was on India to restart peace talks between the two countries.