Pakistan: SCO Summit is multilateral; no bilateral talks, says Dr. Jaishankar
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar on Saturday ruled out any bilateral meeting with Pakistan where he will attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Summit, being held on October 15 and 16.
Delivering the Sardar Patel Lecture on Governance here, he made it clear that his upcoming visit to Pakistan this month will focus on the multilateral event rather than India-Pakistan relations.
Dr. Jaishankar is the first high-ranking Indian minister to visit Pakistan in nearly a decade. The last one to visit Islamabad was the then-EAM Sushma Swaraj, who attended a conference there on Afghanistan in December 2015.
“It (visit) 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,” he remarked.
Dr. Jaishankar noted that typically the Prime Minister attends such high-level Summits with Heads of State, but “it changes” sometimes.
“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 that you’re not going to do and which could also happen. I mean, you plan for that as well,” he said.
India confirmed on August 30 that it had received an invitation from Pakistan for the upcoming SCO Summit Islamabad is hosting.
The 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. India and Pakistan became the permanent members in 2017.
Dr. Jaishankar also said the ongoing conflict in the Middle East is a “great cause of concern,” as Israel intensifies its attacks in Lebanon and a war with Iran is likely.
“The Middle East is not an opportunity. It is a cause of great concern and deep worry. The conflict is widening. What we saw as a terrorist attack, then the response, then we saw what happened in Gaza. Now you are seeing it in exchange in Lebanon, between Israel and Iran. The Houthis are firing on the Red Sea. This is actually costing us. It’s not that somebody is neutral and you benefit,” he said.
“I would say honestly today, whether it is the conflict in Ukraine or the conflict in the Middle East, these are big factors of instability, big factors of concern. I think the entire world, including us, is worried about it.”
