Pakistan on Thursday announced that foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari will attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation’s Council of Foreign Ministers (SCO-CFM) meeting in Goa next month, making this the first high-level visit from Islamabad to India in over six years.
The last such high-level visit to India was by Sartaj Aziz in December 2016, again for a multilateral meeting. Aziz, who was serving as then Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s adviser for foreign policy, had come to India to attend the sixth ministerial conference of the Heart of Asia-Istanbul Process in Amritsar.
Announcing the visit, Pakistan’s foreign office said Bhutto-Zardari will lead the delegation to the SCO-CFM meeting being held in Goa from May 4 to 5.
“FM’s participation in the meeting reflects a continued commitment to SCO Charter and processes and the importance that Pakistan accords to the region in its foreign policy priorities.”
Asked at the weekly briefing if Pakistan had communicated this to India through official channels, external affairs ministry spokesman Arindam Bagchi said it would not be appropriate to focus on any one particular country when invitations had been sent out to all member countries.
