ISLAMABAD: No meeting is “envisaged” between Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit later this week, the Pakistani foreign office said on Wednesday.
Sharif will attend a meeting of the SCO Council of Heads of State (CHS) in Uzbekistan on September 15-16, with climate change, food security and other issues on the agenda. Modi, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi are all expected to attend what will be the SCO’s 22nd meeting.
The SCO is a regional security bloc launched in 2001 to combat terrorism and other security concerns. The group initially consisted of China, Russia and four ex-Soviet Central Asian republics, before India and Pakistan joined in 2017.
“No meeting is envisaged with the Indian prime minister,” Pakistani Foreign Office spokesman Asim Iftikhar told the Dawn newspaper.
However, the foreign office said earlier on Wednesday the Pakistani prime minister would hold bilateral meetings with other participating leaders on the sidelines.
The regional summit comes at a time when Pakistan is reeling from the aftermath of torrential rains and floods, which experts have blamed on climate change. The floods have killed more than 1,400 people, washed away livestock and swathes of crops, and destroyed key infrastructure across the South Asian nation, where officials say the losses could go as high as $40 billion.
