SHANGHAI
\nPakistan\u2019s Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari will attend a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) to be held in India next month, the Foreign Office said on Thursday.
\n\u201cBilawal Bhutto Zardari will be leading the Pakistan delegation to the SCO Council of Foreign Ministers (CFM) being held on May 4-5 2023, in Goa, India,\u201d FO spokesperson Mumtaz Zahrah Baloch announced in a weekly media briefing.
\nShe said the foreign minister would be attending the SCO CFM meeting at the invitation of the current chairman of SCO CFM, Minister for External Affairs of the Republic of India Dr S. Jaishankar.
\nEarlier in January, India had invited Pakistan\u2019s foreign minister to the SCO meeting, signalling a possible thaw in relations between the nuclear-armed rivals. The invitation from Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar had been delivered by the Indian High Commission in Islamabad.
\nIndia took over the rotating presidency of the eight-member grouping in September last year, and sent formal invitations to all the SCO-member countries, including Pakistan and China.
\nThe SCO currently has eight member countries (China, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan), four observer states interested in acceding to full membership, including Afghanistan, Belarus, Iran, and Mongolia, and six \u201cDialogue Partners\u201d (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Turkiye).
\nThe FO spokesperson said that Pakistan\u2019s participation in the SC meetings reflected the country\u2019s commitment to the SCO Charters and processes and the importance Pakistan accorded to the region in its foreign policy priorities.
\n\u201cPakistan continues to participate in SCO meetings in keeping with our longstanding commitment to SCO,\u201d Baloch stated. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
SHANGHAI Pakistan\u2019s Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari will attend a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) to be held in India next month, the Foreign Office said on Thursday. \u201cBilawal Bhutto Zardari will be leading the Pakistan delegation to the SCO Council of Foreign Ministers (CFM) being held on May 4-5 2023, in Goa, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":316970,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[554],"class_list":{"0":"post-327103","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-top-news","8":"tag-foreign-office"},"yoast_head":"\n