Indian foreign minister rules out bilateral talks at SCO summit in Pakistan

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 (SCO) 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.

The last time an Indian foreign minister visited Pakistan was in 2015, when then-External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj traveled to Islamabad for a regional conference on Afghanistan.

Jaishankar's visit to Pakistan holds symbolic importance due to the long-standing hostility between the two nations. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was also invited to the summit, according to Pakistan’s Foreign Office.

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

He was the first Pakistani foreign minister to visit India in almost 12 years. However, no major breakthroughs were reported during the trip

The SCO, founded in 2001, is a political and security alliance that includes China, Russia, and several Central Asian countries, with India and Pakistan joining as full members in 2017.

The organization's annual summit provides a platform for member states to discuss regional security, economic cooperation, and other issues of mutual concern.