Travelling to Pakistan for multilateral event, not to discuss bilateral relations: Jaishankar

STATE TIMES NEWS

New Delhi: External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Saturday appeared to rule out any bilateral talks with his Pakistani counterpart Muhammad Ishaq Dar during his visit to Islamabad this month to attend a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO).
India on Friday announced that Jaishankar will lead the Indian delegation at the SCO Heads of Government summit in Islamabad.
“I expect there would be a lot of media interest because of the very nature of the relationship,” he said at an interactive session.
“I do want to say it will be for a multilateral event. I am not going there to discuss India-Pakistan relations. I am going there to be a good member of the SCO,” he said.
Jaishankar’s remarks came following a question on whether he will hold bilateral talks with his Pakistani counterpart in Islamabad.
In the address at the event, the external affairs minister said like with any neighbour, India would certainly like to have good relations with Pakistan, but that cannot happen by overlooking cross-border terrorism.
It will be for the first time in nearly nine years India’s external affairs minister will travel to Pakistan even as the ties between the two neighbours remained frosty over the Kashmir issue and cross-border terrorism emanating from Pakistan.
Pakistan is hosting the SCO Council of Heads of Government (CHG) meeting on October 15 and 16.
The last Indian external affairs minister to visit Pakistan was Sushma Swaraj. She had travelled to Islamabad in December 2015 to attend a conference on Afghanistan.
“I am scheduled to Pakistan in the middle of this month for a meeting of the SCO heads of government. Normally the prime minister goes to the high level meeting of the heads of state and one of the ministers goes to the heads of the government meeting,” Jaishankar said.
That is in line with the tradition, he said.
In August, Pakistan invited Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the SCO’s summit.
Jaishankar’s visit to Pakistan assumes significance as it is seen as a major decision on New Delhi’s part.
In his address at the Sardar Patel Memorial lecture on governance, Jaishankar said “like with any neighbour, India would certainly like to have good relations with Pakistan.”
“But that cannot happen by overlooking cross-border terrorism and indulging in wishful thinking. As the Sardar demonstrated, realism must be the foundation for policy,” he said.
The decision to send the senior minister is seen as a display of India’s commitment to the SCO.
The ties between India and Pakistan came under severe strain after India’s warplanes pounded a Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist training camp in Balakot in Pakistan in February 2019 in response to the Pulwama terror attack.
The relations further deteriorated after India on August 5, 2019 announced the withdrawal of special powers of Jammu and Kashmir and the bifurcation of the state into two union territories.
Pakistan downgraded diplomatic ties with India after New Delhi abrogated Article 370.
India has been maintaining that it desires normal neighbourly relations with Pakistan while insisting that the onus is on Islamabad to create an environment free of terror and hostility for such engagement.
Pakistan’s then foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari visited India in May 2023 to attend an in-person meeting of the foreign ministers of SCO nations in Goa.
It was the first visit of a Pakistani foreign minister to India in almost 12 years.
In his address, Jaishankar also delved into India’s historical ties with Pakistan.
“Today, we may be tempted to speculate what Sardar Patel’s approach would have been on the Pakistan-related issues that came up in the decade after his passing away,” he said.
“For example, would he have extended his support to the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960? Or dismissed it like the then Prime Minister, as an issue just about a ‘pailful of water’ that was negligible in the context of larger international politics?”
“There was an equally serious mis-judgement of Pakistan by India. Within our system, Patel was the most forceful advocate of using all avenues of pressure on that country after the invasion of Jammu and Kashmir,” Jaishankar said.
“His reluctance to take the matter to the UN itself stemmed from the belief that Pakistan was better directly dealt with, rather than in a framework that Pakistan could manipulate,” he said.