India confirms Pakistan sent invitation to PM Modi for SCO meeting in October

NEW DELHI: India has received an invitation from Pakistan for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Council of Heads of Government (CHG) in-person meeting that it will host in October this year.

Ministry of External Affairs official spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal while addressing a weekly media briefing on Friday confirmed the invitation by Islamabad and noted that the MEA has no update to share.

Responding to a question at the briefing, Jaiswal said, “Yes, we have received an invitation from Pakistan for the Council of Heads of State Government meeting (SCO meeting) that is to happen. We don’t have an update on that. We will let you know what the situation is later.”

Pakistan, which hold the rotating chairmanship of the CHG is scheduled to host the SCO meeting in Islamabad for October this year, Geo News reported.

The Pakistan news outlet had cited Pakistan Foreign Office spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch stating during a weekly news briefing that Pakistan has extended invitations to all heads of government of the SCO member states, including Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, for the upcoming Council of Heads of Government meeting in Islamabad.

Baloch had stated that Islamabad has also received some confirmations for the SCO meeting to be hosted on October 15-16, according to Geo News.

Notably, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) had earlier denied the media reports suggesting that PM Modi would not attend the upcoming SCO summit in Pakistan.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization is a permanent intergovernmental international organization established on June 15, 2001, in Shanghai by Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan.

Its predecessor was the mechanism of the Shanghai Five. Currently, the SCO countries include nine Member States — India, Iran, Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.

The SCO has three Observer States – Afghanistan, Mongolia and Belarus. At the Samarkand SCO Summit in 2022, the process of raising the status of the Republic of Belarus within the Organization to the level of a member state started.

The SCO has 14 Dialogue Partners – Azerbaijan, Armenia, Bahrain, Egypt, Cambodia, Qatar, Kuwait, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Turkiye and Sri Lanka. (ANI)