Pakistan’s Defense Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif has confirmed that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be invited to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit scheduled for October. The summit, to be hosted in Islamabad, will mark the SCO’s Heads of Governments meeting, with Pakistan currently holding the rotating chairmanship of the political and security bloc.
In an interview with Dawn News, Asif emphasized that inviting Modi was a procedural necessity, reflecting the SCO’s inclusive nature. “Yes, certainly. There shouldn’t be any doubt about it,” Asif stated, underscoring that the host country of an SCO summit does not have the discretion to exclude member states from invitations.
This announcement follows India’s invitation to Pakistan’s former Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari to attend an SCO meeting in 2023. Asif noted that the reciprocal nature of such invitations aligns with SCO protocols, which mandate equal treatment for all member states. “If any country imposes such conditions, I think they are inappropriate and the SCO will not accept it either,” he added.
The upcoming summit will be a significant diplomatic event given the historically strained relations between the nuclear-armed neighbors. India and Pakistan, who have fought three wars, including two over the contested Kashmir region, have seen rare high-level visits between the countries. Bhutto-Zardari’s visit to India in 2023 was notable as it was the first by a senior Pakistani official since Nawaz Sharif’s attendance at Modi’s swearing-in ceremony in 2014 and Sartaj Aziz’s participation in the Heart of Asia conference in Amritsar in 2016.
While violence in Kashmir has decreased recently, diplomatic engagements between the two nations have stalled, with no significant talks on major issues in recent years. The invitation to Modi for the SCO summit could serve as a potential avenue for renewed dialogue between the two countries
