SRINAGAR: India has invited Pakistan’s Minister for National Heritage and Culture, Aurangzeb Khan Khichi, to attend the inaugural meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation’s (SCO) civilisational dialogue forum, scheduled to be hosted by New Delhi next month.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had proposed the forum during his visit to Tianjin for the SCO summit last year, with the aim of strengthening people-to-people ties and promoting cultural understanding among member countries.
The invitation comes amid strained relations between India and Pakistan, with the SCO continuing to provide a platform for high-level engagement despite the absence of substantive bilateral talks between the two countries for more than a decade.
Pakistan’s then Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari last visited India in 2023 to attend an SCO foreign ministers’ meeting. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar travelled to Pakistan the following year for the SCO Council of Heads of Government meeting. Neither visit resulted in a bilateral meeting between the two sides.
The latest invitation follows a visit to Pakistan by India’s SCO National Coordinator, Alok Dimri, several weeks ago. He attended a high-level meeting to finalise the organisation’s agenda and engagements ahead of the summit scheduled to be hosted by Pakistan next year.
Pakistan currently holds the SCO presidency and is due to host the heads of state summit in 2027.
Dimri’s visit was the first senior-level engagement between the two countries since the Pahalgam terror attack, according to the report.
