Indian Foreign Minister S Jaishankar's visit to Pakistan remained in the headlines. During this time he participated in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit. However, he did not hold any formal talks with any minister or prime minister of Pakistan. Pakistan has confirmed this. According to the statement issued by Pakistan, no formal meeting took place between Foreign Minister S Jaishankar and Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar on the sidelines of the conference.
“It is common during multilateral meetings, especially for the host and participating guests, for delegations to greet each other and have informal conversations during lunch and dinner,” Foreign Office spokeswoman Mumtaz Zahra Baloch said.
“There has been no formal meeting between Pakistan and India at the level of foreign ministers, including at the SCO,” he said in response to a question on Thursday.
Jaishankar had gone to Pakistan last week to attend the SCO meeting. He is the first foreign minister of India to visit Pakistan in almost a decade. According to sources, informal talks were held between Jaishankar and Dar on two occasions during his visit, but there was no sign of thaw in bilateral relations.
Baloch said Pakistan has renewed for five years the agreement with India to facilitate the travel of Indian pilgrims to Gurdwara Darbar Sahib Kartarpur, Narowal through the Kartarpur Sahib corridor.
He reiterated that Pakistan will continue to provide political, diplomatic and moral support to the Kashmiri people. He said that Pakistan has applied for membership of BRICS.
“We hope that BRICS will accept Pakistan's request in line with its commitment to inclusive multilateralism,” he said.
However, he admitted that Pakistan was not invited to the BRICS summit held in the Russian city of Kazan this week.
BRICS's original members are Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa and has now been expanded to include five more members Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
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