ISLAMABAD: India’s External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said on Saturday he would not hold bilateral talks with Pakistan during his upcoming visit to Islamabad this month to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Summit.
His statement came only a day after the authorities in New Delhi announced his visit to Pakistan amid frosty relations between the two states to participate in the multilateral forum.
Pakistan had originally extended the invitation to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi along with other international leaders to attend the summit that will be held in Islamabad on October 15 and 16.
Jaishankar’s visit to Pakistan will be the first by a high-ranking Indian minister in nearly a decade. The last one was Sushma Swaraj, who traveled to Islamabad in December 2015 to attend a conference on Afghanistan.
“It (visit) will be for a multilateral event,” India Today quoted him as saying. “I’m not going there to discuss India-Pakistan relations. I’m going there to be a good member of the SCO.”
The Indian minister said Modi typically attended such high-level meetings involving heads of state, adding that the norm sometimes changes.
Relations between India and Pakistan hit a major low in 2019 when New Delhi revoked Article 370, which granted special autonomy to Muslim-majority state of Kashmir.
The South Asian neighbors have fought three wars, including two over control of the disputed Kashmir region in the Himalayas. New Delhi accuses Islamabad of aiding and abetting Islamist militants fighting Indian rule in the region, a charge Pakistan denies.
Last year in May, Pakistan’s former foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari visited India to attend an SCO meeting in Goa.
While Bhutto-Zardari did not meet any Indian leaders, he and Jaishankar used the forum to trade blame for their strained relations.

With input from Reuters.