Pak FM Bilawal Bhutto to attend Shanghai Cooperation Organisation meeting in India

Pakistan's Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari will be leading a delegation to India for a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), being held in Goa on May 4-5, the ministry announced on Thursday (April 20).

"Bilawal Bhutto Zardari will be leading the Pakistan delegation to the SCO Council of Foreign Ministers (CFM) being held on May 4-5 2023, in Goa, India," foreign office spokesperson Mumtaz Zahrah Baloch told a weekly media briefing.

​Baloch said the foreign minister would be attending the SCO CFM meeting at the invitation of the current chairman of SCO CFM, India's Minister for External Affairs Dr Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, local media reported.

She said, "Our participation in the meeting reflects Pakistan's commitment to the SCO Charter and processes and the importance that Pakistan accords to the region in its foreign policy priorities."

Here are some of the most recent key visits from Pakistan to India:

-The last visit by a Pakistan prime minister to India was in 2014 when Nawaz Sharif attended Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's swearing-in ceremony.

-In December 2016, the Pakistan PM's foreign affairs advisor Sartaj Aziz, who was seen as the de-facto foreign minister, was on Indian soil for the Heart of Asia conference at Amritsar.

-The previous stand-alone bilateral trip by a Pakistani foreign minister was Hina Rabbani Khar's visit in 2012.

-Salman Sharif, Charge d’Affaires, represented Pakistan at the meeting of Heads of Ministries and departments responsible for the development of physical culture and sports in the SCO member States held in New Delhi on 15 March 2023.

India-Pakistan ties

A bilateral visit took place in 2015 when PM Modi made an unexpected detour to Lahore but relations dipped within a month over the terror attack at the Indian Air Force base at Pathankot, which deteriorated further after India's reaction to the attack - the "surgical strikes" in 2016.

The Imran Khan government took several drastic steps, like recalling ambassadors to cutting off trade ties, after the dilution of Article 370 that changed the constitutional status of Jammu and Kashmir.

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