India invites Pak Defence Minister to attend SCO meeting : Report

India has invited Pakistan's Defense Minister Khawaja Asif to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) meeting to be held in New Delhi in April.

India currently chairs the SCO, which includes China, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. As the president of the SCO, India is set to host a series of meetings. According to reports, the Indian government shared a formal invitation with Pakistan's foreign ministry on Tuesday. There was no immediate confirmation from Delhi on the Pakistani media report.

India had earlier invited Chief Justice of Pakistan Umar Ata Bandial and also shared an invitation to the SCO foreign ministers' meeting, the report said. However, the Chief Justice skipped the meeting of SCO Chief Justices and instead Justice Muneeb Akhtar attended the meeting recently through a video link. A meeting of foreign ministers is scheduled for May in Goa, while a meeting of defense ministers will be held in April in New Delhi. The Pakistani government said it had not yet decided whether Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari or Defense Minister Asif would attend the meeting in India.

Bilawal and China's Qin Gang are among the foreign ministers of SCO member countries invited by India for a meeting it is scheduled to hold in May. Pakistan's foreign ministry said a decision would be taken at an appropriate time. If Pakistan's foreign minister attends the meeting in person, it will be the first such visit from Islamabad to India since 2011, when Pakistan's foreign minister Hina Rabbani Khar visited India that year. Khar is currently serving as the Minister of State for External Affairs.

In May 2014, the then Prime Minister of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif, visited India to attend the swearing-in ceremony of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Then in December 2015, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj visited Pakistan and a few days later, Modi made a brief visit to the neighboring country.

India-Pakistan ties came under serious strain after Indian warplanes attacked a Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist training camp in Pakistan's Balakot in February 2019 in response to the Pulwama terror attack. Relations deteriorated further after India announced in August 2019 the withdrawal of Jammu and Kashmir's special powers and the bifurcation of the former state into the Union Territory.

The SCO was founded at a summit in Shanghai in 2001 by the presidents of Russia, China, the Kyrgyz Republic, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Over the years, it has developed as one of the largest trans-regional international organizations. India and Pakistan became permanent members of the Beijing-based SCO in 2017.