New Delhi: Pakistan foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari landed in Panaji, Goa, on Thursday for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) foreign ministers’ meeting that will take place Friday, and said he was happy to represent his country at the forthcoming meeting and would attend a dinner for the SCO foreign ministers being hosted by external affairs minister S. Jaishankar on Thursday evening.
Jaishankar, meanwhile, held separate bilateral meetings with his Chinese, Russian and Uzbek counterparts, as well as the SCO secretary-general. He told Chinese foreign minister Qin Gang that the “focus remains on resolving outstanding issues and ensuring peace and tranquility in the (Sino-Indian) border areas.”
The reference was to China’s perceived reluctance to pull back its troops from all friction points in the Ladakh sector where it had unilaterally amassed troops three years ago in violation of bilateral pacts with India. India has already made it clear that there can be no normalcy in bilateral ties with China unless Beijing carries out military disengagement from all these friction points.
New Delhi, which is the chair of the eight-nation SCO, on Thursday said it was “driven by a commitment to secure SCO” and that the “key focus areas” are start-ups, science and technology, youth empowerment, Buddhist heritage and traditional medicine.
The SCO foreign ministers’ meeting on Friday is expected to discuss the global and regional situation and prepare for the SCO summit that will be hosted by India in New Delhi on July 3 and 4, which is expected to be attended by the heads of state/government of the group’s member-nations.
There can be no discussion on any bilateral issue between any two member-states at the SCO meeting on Friday under the SCO rules, but it remains to be seen whether the Pakistan foreign minister will rake up the Kashmir issue.
Footage released in the media showed the Pakistan foreign minister, who had earlier arrived in a Pakistan Air Force plane, seated in a room along with the MEA’s joint secretary (Pakistan-Afghanistan-Iran) J.P. Singh, who was earlier India’s deputy high commissioner in Islamabad. Also seated were top diplomats of the Pakistan high commission in New Delhi. It appears unlikely that there will be any formal structured bilateral meeting between Jaishankar and the Pakistani minister amid strained political ties between the two neighbours, primarily due to Islamabad’s continuing support for cross-border terrorism.
On the bilateral meeting with Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, Jaishankar said both ministers conducted a “comprehensive review of our bilateral global and multilateral cooperation”, including in the G-20 and Brics forums, even as he “appreciated Russia’s support for India’s G-20 presidency”. Moscow said the two ministers “praised the dynamics of cooperation in key areas of the (bilateral) special and privileged strategic partnership”. The bilateral meeting took amid developments over the Ukraine conflict after Moscow accused Ukraine of masterminding a drone attack on the Kremlin earlier on Wednesday, although Ukraine has reportedly denied these allegations.
