External affairs minister S Jaishankar on Saturday sought to scotch speculation that his upcoming trip to Islamabad could lead to a breakthrough in India-Pakistan ties, saying he was travelling solely to participate in a Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) meeting and not to discuss bilateral relations.
India announced on Friday that Jaishankar will represent the country at the meeting of the SCO Council of Heads of Government in Islamabad during October 15-16, making him the first foreign minister to travel to Pakistan since 2015. There was no word from the Indian side on bilateral engagements on the margins of the meet.
When Jaishankar was asked about challenges associated with his impending visit to Pakistan at a public event, he said his trip is in keeping with a tradition of the Indian side being represented at the SCO Council of Heads of Government meeting by a minister, since the prime minister attends the meeting of SCO heads of state.
“I expect there would be a lot of media interest because the very nature of the relationship is such…But I do want to say it will be for a multilateral event. I’m not going there to discuss India-Pakistan relations, I’m going there to be a good member of the SCO,” Jaishankar said during a question-and-answer session after delivering the Sardar Patel memorial lecture on governance.
“But since I’m a courteous and civil person, I will behave myself accordingly,” he said, adding he is planning for the trip.
Late former foreign minister Sushma Swaraj visited Islamabad in December 2015 for a meeting of the “Heart of Asia” format, a security conference focused on Afghanistan, and held talks with Pakistani leaders. The last ministerial visit to Pakistan was when Rajnath Singh, in his former role as home minister, attended a meeting of the South Asian Association for Region Cooperation (Saarc) in August 2016.
Soon after Swaraj’s visit to Islamabad, Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a surprise stopover in Lahore, while returning home from a trip to Kabul, to wish then Pakistani premier Nawaz Sharif on his birthday on December 25, 2015.
There was no word on whether Pakistan has sought a bilateral meeting on the margins of the SCO meeting. There is also no clarity on whether the Indian side will agree to such a meeting. The SCO meeting in Islamabad will begin with a networking dinner on October 15, and the visiting leaders will engage in deliberations on a range of issues the following day. The SCO Council of Heads of Government is the second highest decision-making body of the grouping.
While responding to another question, Jaishankar sought to blame Pakistan for the current impasse within Saarc, which has largely been moribund since New Delhi pulled out of a planned summit in Islamabad in 2016. The lack of activity within Saarc hasn’t prevented India from building up physical and energy connectivity with other countries in the region such as Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar, Nepal and Sri Lanka, he said.
“We’ve not had a meeting of Saarc for a very simple reason – that there is one member of Saarc who is practising cross-border terrorism at least against one more member of Saarc, maybe more,” Jaishankar said without naming Pakistan.
If this cross-border terrorism is ignored for the sake of regional cooperation, “you are normalising it, you’re accepting that this is a legitimate tool of statecraft”, he said. India had decided “there must be a cost to” the neighbour practising terrorism, and it could not be business as usual in Saarc.
During the lecture, Jaishankar highlighted the role of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, India’s first home minister, on relations with Pakistan, including his opposition to taking the Kashmir issue to the United Nations in the late 1940s.
“Within our system, Patel was the most forceful advocate of using all avenues of pressure on that country after the invasion of Jammu and Kashmir. His reluctance to take the matter to the UN itself stemmed from the belief that Pakistan was better directly dealt with, rather than in a framework that Pakistan could manipulate,” he said.
Jaishankar also questioned whether Patel, who died in 1950, would have backed the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960 with Pakistan on the grounds that it was a “decisive move towards a settlement and to peace with Pakistan”. He added: “Like with any neighbor, India would certainly like to have good relations with Pakistan. But that cannot happen by overlooking cross-border terrorism and indulging in wishful thinking.”
