Pakistan will host CHG meeting, PM Shahbaz Sharif sent invitation to Prime Minister Modi

Karachi. Pakistan is hosting the meeting of the Council of Heads of Government in October. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been invited to attend this meeting. Apart from the Prime Minister, other leaders of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) have also been invited. Looking at the relations and circumstances so far, there is no question of PM Modi going to Islamabad. In such a situation, it will be interesting to see whether he sends a minister to represent India in this program or not.

Pakistan is going to host this meeting on October 15-16. Let us tell you that hosting of CHG comes to all the countries in turn. It is the second largest decision-making body after the Council of Heads of States in the Eurasian Group. PM Modi has been regularly attending the summit of heads of state, although this year he refused to attend in Kazakhstan. In his place, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar attended Bishkek last year.

The Indian government has not yet taken any decision on Pakistan’s invitation to PM Modi for the SCO CHG meeting. The recent terror attacks in Jammu may serve to create an environment against any high-level ministerial visit to Pakistan.

In his message on Kargil Vijay Diwas last month, PM Modi had named Pakistan and said that it has not learnt anything from history. He had said that Pakistan is trying to remain relevant through terrorism and proxy war. The last Indian foreign minister to visit Pakistan was Sushma Swaraj, who visited Pakistan in 2015.

Despite PM Modi’s counterpart Shehbaz Sharif’s good relations with his brother Nawaz Sharif, India-Pakistan relations are unlikely to improve. This is because Pakistan wants India to reverse the decision to end the special status of Jammu and Kashmir. At the same time, India says that it has nothing left to discuss with Pakistan on the Kashmir issue except its illegal occupation of PoK.

Let us tell you that the SCO is perhaps the only multilateral forum where India and Pakistan have managed to work together despite hostility. PM Modi had skipped the summit of heads of state in Kazakhstan. He did so because the Parliament session had already begun in early July.

It is not yet clear whether the leaders will be allowed to address the SCO event virtually. Both India and Pakistan are full members of the group led by Russia and China.