Indian External Affairs Minister Visits Pakistan

Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar traveled to Pakistan on 15 Oct to attend a conclave of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). This marks the first high-level visit from India in nine years, amidst ongoing tensions between the two neighbors over the Kashmir dispute and India’s accusations of Pakistan supporting terrorism within its borders. Jaishankar is attending talks on economic cooperation, trade, environmental issues, and joining a banquet reception hosted by Pakistan PM Shebaz Sharif to welcome the delegates from the SCO member nations. Neither India or Pakistan have requested a bilateral meeting with each other. Upon Jaishankar’s remark last week that he would attend the meeting as a ‘good member of the SCO,’ Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said that the Pakistan govt. plans to welcome Jaishankar with ‘full protocol,’ as is their duty as a ‘good host.’ Meanwhile, Maryam Nawaz, the CM of Pakistan’s Panjab province, has called for climate diplomacy with India to mitigate the impact of smog affecting both countries. She emphasized that both Indian and Pakistani Panjab should undertake joint efforts to address the issue of paddy stubble burning, which significantly contributes to air pollution in the region. Lahore and New Delhi regularly feature among the world’s most polluted cities during the smog season from October to February. CM Nawaz stated that ending smog is a matter of children’s health and survival. It is still early in the paddy harvest cycle, but stubble burning data in Indian Panjab, from NASA’s Worldview satellite, shows that this year the incidents have been lowest in the last three years.