Pakistan on Thursday formally invited Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation's (SCO) Council of Heads of Government (CHG) meeting to be held in Islamabad.
The two-day in-person SCO Heads of Government meeting will be taking place on October 15-16. Pakistan currently holds the rotating chairmanship of the SCO (CHG).
Invitations have been sent to the heads of countries to participate in the meeting.
Foreign Office Spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch at a weekly press briefing said that an invitation has been sent to India PM Narendra Modi as well.
“Some countries have already confirmed participation (for the meeting), which will be informed in due course,” she said. The official list of the attendees is yet to be released.
India is yet to respond to the invitation.
On asked about the ties with India, Baloch said that Pakistan does not have direct bilateral trade with India.
India hosted the SCO Summit last year and Pakistan PM Shehbaz Sharif attended the meeting in a virtual format through a video link.
With speculations and reports of India rejecting the SCO invitation by Pakistan, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said that the ministry has not commented on this matter and would request speculative news in this regard be avoided.
The SCO, comprising India, China, Russia, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, is an influential economic and security bloc that has emerged as one of the largest trans-regional international organisations.
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As part of this key regional group, both Pakistan and India can hold summit meetings.
Pakistan's then foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari visited India in May 2023 to attend the in-person two-day meeting of the SCO Council of Foreign Ministers in Goa. Zardari became the first Pakistani foreign minister to visit India in nearly 12 years.
For years India and Pakistan had strained relations. Pakistan downgraded its ties with India after the Indian Parliament abrogated Article 370 on August 5, 2019.
