Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar will visit Pakistan to attend a summit Tuesday, first such visit in nearly a decade.
Jaishankar will travel to Islamabad for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit to "represent India at the meeting," according to reports from the Foreign Ministry.
Both arch-rivals have stated that no bilateral talks are planned and Jaishankar's visit will strictly adhere to the summit's agenda.
The two nuclear-armed nations are bitter adversaries, having fought multiple wars since their partition in 1947 following British colonial rule.
The SCO comprises China, India, Russia, Pakistan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Belarus – with 16 more countries affiliated as observers or "dialogue partners."
The organization is sometimes viewed as an alternative to the Western-dominated military alliance, NATO. While the SCO has a mandate to discuss security, the Islamabad summit is due to focus on trade, humanitarian and cultural issues.
The last Indian foreign minister to visit Pakistan was Sushma Swaraj in 2015 and that same year Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a surprise visit to Lahore.
However, relations between the two nations have worsened since 2019, following India's decision to revoke the autonomy of Indian-administered Kashmir, prompting Pakistan to suspend bilateral trade and downgrade diplomatic ties with New Delhi.
The Himalayan region, home to a long-running and deadly insurgency against Indian rule, is divided between the two countries and claimed by both countries in full.
In 2023, Pakistan's former Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari attended an SCO meeting in India, where he and Jaishankar had a public dispute, but no bilateral discussions took place.
