Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar arrived in Pakistan on Tuesday, October 15, for a Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit, the first top Delhi diplomat to visit in nearly a decade.
Jaishankar’s plane landed just before 3:30pm (10:30 GMT) at an airbase near the capital Islamabad, a foreign office official said, as state TV showed him receiving a bouquet of flowers from a host delegation that did not include any senior ministers.
India and Pakistan are adversaries with longstanding political tensions, having fought three wars and numerous smaller skirmishes since they were carved out of the subcontinent’s partition in 1947. Relations have been particularly sour since 2019, when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi revoked the limited autonomy of Indian-administered Kashmir.
The Himalayan region is divided between India and Pakistan but claimed by both in full, with each accusing the other of stoking militancy there. Modi’s 2019 move was celebrated across India but led Pakistan to suspend bilateral trade and downgrade diplomatic ties with New Delhi.
Indian government spokesman Randhir Jaiswal said that the agenda of Jaishankar’s visit would strictly follow the SCO schedule, centered around trade, humanitarian and social issues.
Jaishankar managed to exchanged pleasantries with Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, hours after landing. The brief exchange and handshake between Jaishankar and Sharif took place at a banquet dinner hosted by the Pakistani prime minister at his residence in honour of the delegates attending the summit.
Former Indian foreign minister Sushma Swaraj was the last to visit Pakistan in 2015, arriving for a summit on Afghanistan. Modi also made a surprise visit to Pakistan that year, shortly after taking office for his first term, sparking short-lived hopes of a thaw in relations.
The SCO represents 40 per cent of the world’s population and about 30 per cent of its GDP, but its members have diverse political systems and even open disagreements with one another.
Pakistan’s former foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari was in Goa, India, last year for an SCO meeting. It was the first official visit by a senior Pakistani official since 2016 however Zardari and Jaishankar did not hold a one-on-one meeting.