next month
NEW DELHI
India has invited Pakistan Defence Minister Khawaja Asif for a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) next month along with his counterparts from other member nations of the grouping.
The invite to Khawaja Asif for the April 28 meeting was sent by India in its capacity as current chair of the eight-nation SCO, weeks after a similar communication was sent to Islamabad inviting Pakistan Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari for a foreign ministerial conclave of the grouping that is scheduled to be held in Goa in May.
As President of the SCO, India is set to host a series of meetings. India is also set to send separate invites to Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin for the annual SCO summit later this year.
Besides India, Pakistan and China, the other SCO member-countries are Russia, the Kyrgyz Republic, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. If Asif attends the meeting in person, this will be a rare instance when a Pakistan Defence Minister visits India, the Indian media reported today.
India earlier invited Chief Justice of Pakistan Umar Ata Bandial, as well as shared an invitation for the meeting of foreign ministers of SCO, the report said. The chief justice, however, skipped the meeting of the SCO chief justices and instead Justice Muneeb Akhtar attended the meeting through a video link recently, it said.
The foreign ministers’ meeting is scheduled for May in Goa while the defence ministers’ huddle will be held in New Delhi in April. The Pakistani government has said that it has not yet taken a decision on whether Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari or Defence Minister Asif will attend the meetings in India.
Bilawal and China’s Qin Gang are among the foreign ministers of the SCO member nations invited by India for the meeting it is scheduled to host in May. The Pakistan Foreign Office has said that the decision will be taken at an appropriate time.
Military historian Mandeep Bajwa recalled that the last such meeting took place when Pakistan’s then President Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto visited India and, together with then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, signed the Simla Agreement in July 1972.
Bhutto at the time held multiple portfolios, including Defence and Foreign Affairs. “Other than that, there has been no such opportunity earlier for a Pakistan defence minister to visit India, as he has little say in military affairs of Pakistan,” Bajwa claimed.
The last Pakistan Foreign minister to visit India was Hina Rabbani Khar in 2011. The invitation to the Pakistan defence minister was sent through the Indian High Commission in Islamabad.
India will separately invite Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, China’s President Xi Jinping and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin for the annual SCO summit later this year. It is learnt that Defence Minister Rajnath Singh will chair the meeting. Issues related to terrorism, regional security and the security situation in Afghanistan are among the topics expected to feature in the meeting.
Former Pakistan PM Nawaz Sharif had visited India to attend Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s swearing-in ceremony in May 2014. Subsequently, then External Affairs minister Sushma Swaraj had visited Pakistan, followed by a brief visit by Prime Minister Modi.
In previous instances, the Food and Agriculture Minister Rana Abdul Hamid was the chief guest at the R-Day parade in 1965, despite conflicts with Pakistan in the same year.
Bajwa said Pakistani Governor General Ghulam Mohd also visited India in the 1950s. “Pak CinC General Musa visited India in 1960 and also held a reunion with his battalion mates. He visited again after the Tashkent Agreement,” he said.
Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw, former Army Chief, had visited Pakistan post 1971 war on the issue of Indian POWs in Pakistan custody. — DNA
