NEW DELHI, Oct 15, 2024 (BSS/AFP) - India's foreign minister flies to Pakistan for a summit on Tuesday, the first visit by New Delhi's top envoy to its arch-rival neighbour in nearly a decade. Subrahmanyam Jaishankar will travel to Islamabad for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit to "represent India at the meeting", the foreign ministry said Tuesday. The last time an Indian foreign minister visited Pakistan was in 2015 when Sushma Swaraj attended a conference on Afghanistan. The same year, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a surprise visit to Lahore to meet his then-counterpart Nawaz Sharif, sparking hopes of a thaw in relations with Pakistan. Pakistan's former foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari was in India's Goa in 2023 -- also a rare visit -- for an SCO meeting where he and Jaishankar were involved in a verbal spat.
