External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Saturday said here he will not hold bilateral talks with Pakistan during his upcoming visit to Islamabad to participate in the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO) summit in mid-October. India on Friday announced that he will travel to Pakistan to attend the conclave.
“It (visit) will be for a multilateral event. I’m not going there to discuss India-Pakistan relations. I’m going there to be a good member of the SCO,” he said at the sidelines of an event in the national capital. “But, you know, since I’m a courteous and civil person, I will behave myself accordingly,” he added.
Jaishankar noted that typically the Prime Minister attends such high-level meetings with heads of state, but “it changes” sometimes.
“So your question, I think, is, what am I planning for it? Of course, I’m planning to go. In my business, you plan for everything which you’re going to do, and for a lot of things which you’re not going to do and which could also happen. I mean, you plan for that as well,” he said.
Jaishankar made these observations during an interaction with media while attending the Sardar Patel lecture on governance organised by the IC Centre for Governance.
The SCO was founded as a political union of Central Asian nations Russia, China, the Kyrgyz Republic, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan -- to discuss security and economic matters. India and Pakistan became permanent members in 2017.
Jaishankar said the situation in the Middle East is a “great cause of concern,” as Israel intensifies its attacks in Lebanon.
“The Middle East is not an opportunity. The Middle Est is a cause of great concern and deep worry. The conflict is widening what we saw as a terrorist attack, then the response, then we saw what happened in Gaza. Now you are seeing it in exchange in Lebanon, between Israel and Iran. The Houthis are firing on the Red Sea. This is actually costing us. It’s not that somebody is neutral and you benefit,” he said.
The External Affairs Minister added, “I would say honestly today, whether it is the conflict in Ukraine or the conflict in the Middle East West Asia, these are big factors of instability, big factors of concern. I think the entire world, including us, is worried about it.”
He also took a veiled dig at Pakistan, holding it responsible for the derailment of the SAARC initiative. “At the moment SAARC is not moving forward, we haven’t had a meeting of SAARC for a very simple reason -- there is one member of SAARC who is practicing cross-border terrorism at least against one more member of SAARC, maybe more...
Terrorism is something which is unacceptable and despite a global view of it if one of our neighbours continues to do it there cannot be business as usual in SAARC.
That’s the reason why the SAARC meeting has not happened in recent years -- but it doesn’t mean that the regional activities have stopped. In fact, in the last 5-6 years, we have seen far more regional integration in the Indian subcontinent,” he added.
India has all along maintained that it will not hold bilateral dialogues with Pakistan until the latter stops breeding and fostering cross-border terrorism.
India on Friday announced that the minister will travel to Pakistan to attend a conclave of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in mid-October.
It will be for the first time in nearly nine years that India’s External Affairs Minister will travel to Pakistan even as the ties between the two neighbours remain frosty over cross-border terrorism. 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.
The announcement on Jaishankar’s visit was made by external affairs ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal.
“The External Affairs Minister will lead our delegation to Pakistan to participate in the SCO summit which will be held in Islamabad on October 15 and 16,” he said at his weekly media briefing.
Meanwhile, speaking at the event, Jaishankar highlighted Sardar Patel’s historical stance against involving the United Nations in disputes, particularly concerning Jammu and Kashmir, arguing that such actions could allow external powers to manipulate the situation.
He noted that Patel believed it was more effective to address issues directly with Pakistan rather than through international frameworks.
He highlighted that, like any other neighbour, India would like to have good relations with Pakistan but not by overlooking cross-border terrorism. Reflecting on Patel’s pragmatic approach, he underscored the importance of realism as the foundation of India’s foreign policy.
