Pakistan’s foreign minister will travel to India in May, first visit of its kind since 2019

20 Apr. (EUROPE PRESS) –

Pakistani Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari will travel to India in early May to participate in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Foreign Ministers Summit, in the first visit of this to the neighboring country since the bilateral confrontations registered in 2019 around Kashmir.

“Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari will lead the Pakistani delegation at the SCO Council of Ministers to be held May 4-5 in Goa, India,” said Ministry spokeswoman Mumtaz Zahrah Baloch. , during his daily press conference, according to the transcript provided by the Pakistani Foreign Ministry through its website.

Thus, he has detailed that Bhutto Zardari “attends the SCO ministerial summit at the invitation of its current president, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, India’s Foreign Minister.” “Our participation in the meeting reflects Pakistan’s commitment to the SCO charter and processes and the importance that Pakistan gives to the region in its foreign policy priorities”, he concluded.

The visit will be the first high-level direct diplomatic contact between the two countries after India carried out a series of bombardments in Pakistani territory in 2019 against alleged bases of the terrorist group Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) in retaliation for the attack perpetrated. days earlier in the city of Pulwama, which left more than 45 Indian soldiers dead. The Pakistani Air Force responded by shooting down an Indian plane and arresting the pilot, who was later released.

The Prime Minister of Pakistan, Shehbaz Sharif, proposed in January to India “serious and sincere” talks on their bilateral disputes, including the one that revolves around the Kashmir region, although he demanded that the decision to revoke the agreement be withdrawn beforehand. autonomy in the area, adopted in August 2019.

Pakistan and India have disputed the region of historic Kashmir since 1947 and have fought over it in two of the three wars they have waged since their independence from the United Kingdom. In 1999 there was a brief but intense military confrontation between both nuclear powers and since 2003 a fragile truce has been maintained.