Islamabad: Pakistan announced on Thursday that Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari would attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) meeting in India next month. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mumtaz Zehra Baloch announced this at a weekly press conference here. Baloch said that Bilawal Bhutto Zardari will lead Pakistan’s delegation to the SCO Council of Foreign Ministers (CFM) meeting to be held on May 4-5, 2023 in Goa, India. This put an end to weeks of speculation as to whether Bhutto would attend the conference in person.
Baloch said that Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Indian Foreign Minister S. Will attend the conference on the invitation of Jaishankar. He said that our participation in the meeting reflects Pakistan’s commitment to the SCO charter and procedures and the importance given to the region in Pakistan’s foreign policy priorities. This will be the first high-level visit by any Pakistani leader to India in recent years. This is expected to reduce the bitterness in the relations between the two countries.
Relations between India and Pakistan were strained after the Pulwama terror attack in February 2019 when Indian fighter jets destroyed a Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist training camp in Pakistan’s Balakot. In August 2019, India withdrew the special status of Jammu and Kashmir and divided it into two union territories, after which further bitterness arose in the relations between the two countries.
The SCO was founded in 2001 at a summit of the presidents of Russia, China, the Kyrgyz Republic, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan in Shanghai. In later years it emerged as one of the largest regional organisations. India and Pakistan became permanent members of the China-based SCO in 2017.
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