Indian foreign minister to visit Pakistan to attend regional meeting

By Ahmad Adil

NEW DELHI (AA) - India’s foreign minister will lead a delegation to Pakistan to attend a regional summit, an Indian Foreign Ministry spokesperson said on Friday.

This will be the first trip by an Indian foreign minister to its western neighbor since 2015.

External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar will be visiting Islamabad to attend the meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Council of Heads of Government on Oct. 15-16, said ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal.

The visit came amid persistent tensions between the two nuclear-armed neighbors, following India's unilateral decision to strip the disputed Jammu and Kashmir valley of longstanding special status in August 2019.

In response, Islamabad had downgraded its diplomatic relations with New Delhi.

Last year, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari also traveled to India to attend the SCO Foreign Ministers’ summit in the resort city of Goa. That was the first trip to India by any Pakistani foreign minister in over a decade.

In 2018, India also sent two ministers during the inauguration of the Kartarpur Corridor in Pakistan for Sikh pilgrims from neighboring India.

In 2016, then-Indian Home Minister Rajnath Singh visited Islamabad for the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation’s (SAARC) Home Minister’s meeting.

In December 2015, then-Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj visited Pakistan.

Former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif visited India to attend Prime Minister Narendra Modi's swearing-in ceremony in May 2014.