The 2016 Uri terrorist attack soured relations between India and Pakistan. India has maintained that no relationship can be established with Pakistan until it stops financing and sponsoring terrorist activities.
S Jaishankar, Minister of External Affairs, clarified on October 5, that the upcoming SCO Summit will not include any discussion about India-Pakistan Relations.
Jaishankar is visiting Pakistan this month to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Conclave. This will be the first high-profile visit by an EAM to a neighbouring country for nine years.
"It will be a multilateral occasion." I am not going to India-Pakistan to discuss relations. "I'm going to the SCO in order to be a good SCO member," he told the crowd at an event held in the capital. "But you know, because I am a civil and courteous person, I will act accordingly," he said.
Sushma Swaraj was the last Indian minister of external affairs to visit Pakistan. She had traveled to Islamabad to attend a conference about Afghanistan in December 2015.
The SCO Council of Heads of Government meeting will be held in Pakistan on October 15-16.
Jaishankar took a swipe at Pakistan as well, holding the country responsible for the SAARC initiative's derailment.
"At this moment, SAARC has stopped moving forward. We haven't held a SAARC meeting for one very simple reason: there's a member of SAARC that is committing cross-border terrorism, at least against another member of SAARC and maybe even more... This is the reason the SAARC meeting was not held in the past few years, but it does not mean regional activities have ceased. "In fact, over the past 5-6 years we've seen a lot more regional integration on the Indian Subcontinent," he said.
The 2016 Uri terrorist attack soured relations between India and Pakistan. India has maintained that no relationship can be established with Pakistan until it stops financing and sponsoring terrorist activities.
Jaishankar has been invited to speak at the protests of Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf.
At a show broadcast on Geo News, PTI leader Barrister Muhammad Ali Saif and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Advisor to CM said that world leaders will visit Pakistan. "They will be pleased to see our democratic system and praise its strength."
Saif: "We (PTI), would like to invite Jaishankar Sahab to join our demonstration and address our people, and see how Pakistan is a strong democracy with every person having the right to protest."
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