PM Modi News: Pakistan invited Modi for SCO meeting, will PM go?

New Delhi: Pakistan has invited PM Narendra Modi for a personal meeting with other leaders of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). The SCO meeting will be held in October this year. India has not said yes to this invitation. It is also possible that PM Modi will not accept this invitation, but it will be interesting to see whether he/she appoints a minister to represent India at this event. Earlier, he/she did the same in view of the tense relations with Pakistan.When is the SCO meeting?
Pakistan will host the meeting on October 15-16 as it holds the rotating chairmanship of the CHG. It is the second-highest decision-making body in the Eurasian grouping after the Council of Heads of State. Modi has been a regular attendee of the summit of heads of state, though he/she did not do so in Kazakhstan this year as it clashed with the dates of a parliament session and the SCO in early July.

If not Modi, then who will go?
It has been a practice to nominate a minister to represent India in the CHG. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar attended the CHG meeting in Bishkek last year. It is not yet clear if the leader will be allowed to address the event virtually in Pakistan if he/she is unable to attend physically. Both India and Pakistan are full members of the Russia and China-led group, which New Delhi considers important for regional security and cooperation with Central Asian countries.

However, it is wary of Chinese dominance in the SCO and its attempts to establish the group as an anti-Western forum. Unlike all other member-states, India has never supported China’s BRI in SCO joint statements and last year, at the heads of state summit hosted virtually by Modi, it refused to join the long-term economic strategy announced by the bloc as it seemed designed to serve Chinese interests.

Ministers of India and Pakistan have visited each other’s country
Significantly, however, the SCO is perhaps the only multilateral forum where India and Pakistan have managed to work together, even after relations turned hostile following their failed attempt to restart the dialogue process in 2015 and the subsequent terrorist attacks. While Indian delegations have travelled to Pakistan to participate in SCO exercises and Pakistan Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari visited India for the SCO Foreign Ministers’ meeting last year, this cooperation has been made possible by the SCO Charter which does not allow member-states to raise bilateral issues.

Sushma Swaraj went to Pakistan
The Indian government has not yet taken any decision on the invitation extended as per SCO protocol for the CHG meeting. The recent terror attacks in Jammu will act as a deterrent against any high-level ministerial visit to Pakistan. In his/her Kargil Vijay Diwas message last month, Modi had named Pakistan, saying it has learnt nothing from history and is trying to remain relevant through terrorism and proxy war. The last Indian foreign minister to visit Pakistan was Sushma Swaraj in 2015. Despite Modi’s rapprochement with Nawaz Sharif, the brother of his/her counterpart Shehbaz Sharif, India-Pakistan relations are unlikely to improve. While Pakistan wants India to reverse its decision to end the special status of Jammu and Kashmir, India says there is no other issue left to discuss with Pakistan on the Kashmir issue except its illegal occupation of PoK.