Pakistan’s Foreign Minister, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, will attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Council meeting in India next month. The meeting, which takes place on May 4-5, is an opportunity to break the ice between the two neighboring countries. The visit reflects Pakistan’s commitment to the SCO Charter and processes and the importance that Pakistan places on the region in its foreign policy priorities.
Bilawal Bhutto Zardari stated that his visit should not be seen as a bilateral one, but rather in the context of the SCO. The Pakistani minister’s attendance at the meeting is the highest-level visit to India by any Pakistani leader in recent years.
Previous visits by Pakistani leaders include then-foreign minister Hina Rabbani Khar in 2011 and then-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in May 2014, who attended Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s swearing-in ceremony. Tensions between India and Pakistan escalated in February 2019 after India’s warplanes bombed a Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist training camp in Pakistan’s Balakot in response to the Pulwama terror attack.
