External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar announced on Saturday that he will not engage in discussions with Pakistan during his forthcoming visit to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) conclave.
“It (visit) will be for a multilateral event. I’m not going there to discuss India-Pakistan relations. I’m going there to be a good member of the SCO,” he said at the sidelines of an event in the national capital.
“But, you know, since I’m a courteous and civil person, I will behave myself accordingly,” he added.
“At the moment SAARC is not moving forward, we haven’t had a meeting of SAARC for a very simple reason – there is one member of SAARC who is practising cross-border terrorism at least against one more member of SAARC, maybe more… Terrorism is something which is unacceptable and despite a global view of it if one of our neighbours continues to do it – there cannot be business as usual in SAARC. That’s the reason why the SAARC meeting has not happened in recent years – but it doesn’t mean that the regional activities have stopped. In fact, in the last 5-6 years, we have seen far more regional integration in the Indian subcontinent,” he added.
On Friday, India announced that Jaishankar will travel to Pakistan to participate in the SCO conclave in mid-October.
This marks the first visit by an Indian external affairs minister to Pakistan in nearly nine years, despite ongoing tensions between the two nations over cross-border terrorism.
Pakistan is set to host the SCO Council of Heads of Government (CHG) meeting on October 15 and 16. The last Indian external affairs minister to visit Pakistan was Sushma Swaraj, who attended an Afghanistan conference in Islamabad in December 2015.
