Pakistan Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari will lead his country’s delegation at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Council of Foreign Ministers (CFM) meeting scheduled to be held in Goa on 4-5 May.

”Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari will lead Pakistan’s delegation to the SCO-CFM meeting being held on 4-5 May 2023 in Goa, India. The FM’s participation in the meeting reflects Pakistan’s continued commitment to the SCO Charter and processes and the importance that Pakistan accords to the region in its foreign policy priorities,” Pakistan Foreign Office spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch said in Islamabad. She said Bilawal would attend the meeting at the invitation of External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar.

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This will be the first visit by a top Pakistani leader to India since former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif travelled to New Delhi for the inauguration of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014. Bilawal will be the first foreign minister to visit India after a gap of nearly 12 years. In 2011, the then Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar visited India.

At a media briefing in New Delhi, Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Arindam Bagchi confirmed that invitations had been sent to the foreign ministers of all SCO countries for the meeting. Asked if Pakistan had sought a bilateral meeting between the two foreign ministers of India and Pakistan, he said It would be ‘premature’ to say anything in the matter. ”Usually, the minister tries to hold as many bilaterals as possible on the margins of such meetings,” he added.

The Pakistan foreign minister had come under heavy criticism recently after he resorted to a personal attack on Prime Minister Modi and slammed the RSS while responding to  External Affairs Minister Jaishankar’s charge that Pakistan continued to support various anti-India terror groups and described the neighbouring country as the “epicentre of terrorism”.

Strongly condemning Bilawal’s remarks, India said he should better direct his “frustration” towards the masterminds of terrorist enterprises in his own country that have made terrorism a part of its “state policy.”

India has formally sent invitations to all SCO members, including Pakistan and China, for the upcoming Goa meeting. Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov are also likely to participate.

The SCO comprises Russia, India, China, Pakistan, and four central Asian countries – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Iran is the latest entrant to the grouping and will attend the summit in India later this year for the first time as a full-fledged member.