At the dinner held by India’s foreign minister on Thursday evening to kick off the two-day Shanghai Cooperation Organisation conference, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and Bilawal Bhutto Zardari shook hands and exchanged greetings, sources said.
To attend the SCO Council of Foreign Ministers meeting, whose main discussions are slated for tomorrow, Bilawal Bhutto arrived in Goa this afternoon. Since Hina Rabbani Khar and SM Krishna, the former Indian minister of external affairs, met in 2011, this is the first trip to India by a Pakistani foreign minister. Currently, Khar is Pakistan’s state minister for foreign affairs.
Additionally, this is Pakistan’s first high-level visit since Sartaj Aziz, its counsellor on foreign affairs, visited India in December 2016.
The Pakistani minister stated in a video message that he was headed to Goa, India, before boarding a plane. will serve as the delegation’s leader for Pakistan at the CFM for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. My choice to attend this summit demonstrates Pakistan’s steadfast adherence to the SCO charter.
Bilawal Bhutto emphasised that the SCO is the main focus of his visit and expressed his eagerness for fruitful conversations with “my counterparts from friendly countries.”
Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Pakistan’s Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, Uzbekistan’s Bakhtiyor Saidov, and SCO Secretary General Zhang Ming all attended the gala that S Jaishankar hosted at the seaside Taj Exotica Resort in Benaulim. Additionally present were the foreign ministers of Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan.
