No Discussion On India-Pak Relations During My Islamabad Visit, Clarifies Jaishankar

New Delhi: Union External Affairs minister S Jaishankar is scheduled to visit Pakistan later this month for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit.

Are bilateral discussions on India-Pakistan relations on the agenda?

Jaishankar’s answer was a firm ‘no’ as he clarified that his visit to the neighbouring country is for a multilateral event.

“It (visit to Islamabad) will be for a multilateral event… I’m not going there to discuss India-Pakistan relations. I’m going there to be a good member of the SCO. But, you know, since I’m a courteous and civil person, I will behave myself accordingly,” the minister said.

On why Narendra Modi won’t be travelling to Pakistan, Jaishankar said that typically the Prime Minister attends such high-level meetings with heads of state, but “it changes” sometimes.

New Delhi confirmed on August 30 that it had received an invitation from Pakistan for the SCO summit to be hosted by Islamabad on October 15 and 16.

How is Jaishankar looking at the visit?

“So your question, I think, is, what am I planning for it? Of course, I’m planning to go… In my business, you plan for everything which you’re going to do, and for a lot of things which you’re not going to do and which could also happen. I mean, you plan for that as well,” he quipped.

The last time an External Affairs minister visited Pakistan was Sushma Swaraj, who travelled to Islamabad in December 2015 to attend a conference on Afghanistan.

India and Pakistan became permanent members of SCO in 2017.

SCO was founded as a political union of Central Asian nations — Russia, China, the Kyrgyz Republic, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan — to discuss security and economic matters.