FM Jaishankar says discussion on Pakistan-India ties during SCO summit not on the cards

• Visit will be for multilateral event but not bilateral talks: Jaishankar.
• Indian MEA confirmed Jaishankar's visit to Pakistan a day ago.
• Islamabad to chair SCO on Oct 15-16 as regional organisation's chair.

India's foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar will not discuss bilateral relations when he visits Pakistan this month, the first such visit in nearly a decade, for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit.

"I expect there would be a lot of media interest because of the very nature of the relationship," Jaishankar said in response to a query at an event in New Delhi.

"But I do want to say it will be for a multilateral event. I am not going there to discuss India-Pakistan relations," he added.

On Friday, the Indian foreign ministry confirmed that Jaishankar will visit Pakistan to participate in the summit on October 15-16 but did not say if he would meet any Pakistani leaders on the sidelines.

Relations between the two countries have gone through periods of thaw from time to time but have been largely frozen since they downgraded diplomatic ties in tit-for-tat moves in 2019.

Earlier this year, Jaishankar said that India would want to "find a solution to the issue of years-old cross-border terrorism" but added that it cannot be the "policy of a good neighbour".

"I am going there to be a good member of the SCO but since I am a courteous and civil person, I will behave myself accordingly," he said.

Islamabad extended invitations to all the government heads of the member states, including Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, for the upcoming SCO-CHG meeting in Islamabad, Foreign Office Spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch confirmed in a statement in July.

Pakistan currently holds the rotating Chairmanship of the SCO-CHG, which is the regional organisation's second-highest decision-making forum.

Last year in May, the then-foreign minister, Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari visited India to attend the two-day meeting of the SCO Council of Foreign Ministers.

It was the first visit to India by a top Pakistani official since then-prime minister Nawaz Sharif attended Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's swearing-in in 2014.

Pakistan downgraded its ties with India after the Modi-led government unilaterally changed the special status of the Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) in August 2019 — the decision that Islamabad believed undermined the environment for holding talks between the neighbours.

Islamabad has linked its decision to normalising ties with New Delhi with the restoration of the special status of the IIOJK.

Despite the frosty ties, the two countries agreed to renew the 2003 ceasefire agreement along the Line of Control (LoC) in February 2021.