J&K terror attack casts shadow of uncertainty over meeting of India, Pakistan Foreign Ministers in Goa

Bilawal is expected to visit Goa to take part in the meeting of the foreign ministers of the SCO

The terrorist attack on the Rashtriya Rifles personnel at Poonch in Jammu and Kashmir last week is likely to cast a shadow on the possibility of a bilateral meeting between External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and his counterpart from Pakistan, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, in Goa early next month.

Bilawal is expected to visit Goa to take part in the meeting of the foreign ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) on May 4 and 5.

Jaishankar, being the host of the meeting of the SCO Council of Foreign Ministers, is likely to have bilateral meetings with each of his guests on the sideline of the conclave. Neither New Delhi nor Islamabad had initially ruled out the possibility of a bilateral meeting between Jaishankar and Bilawal too.

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But the killing of five Rashtriya Rifles soldiers in a terrorist attack at Mendher in the Poonch district of the union territory of J&K on April 20 prompted New Delhi to give a long hard look at the pros and cons of restarting formal engagement with Islamabad.

While the investigation into the attack on the Rashtriya Rifles soldiers in Poonch was still on, a source in New Delhi told DH that it could be a hit-and-run offensive by the terrorists, who might have sneaked into India from across the country’s Line of Control (LoC) with Pakistan. In such a scenario, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government might not like to give its nod to a formal engagement between the foreign ministers of India and Pakistan.

Before taking a call on the Jaishankar-Bilawal meeting on the sideline of the SCO conclave in Goa, the Modi Government is also expected to factor in the state assembly elections in Karnataka, with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party facing a tough challenge from the Congress and the Janata Dal (Secular). The state will go to polls on May 10, just a few days after the meeting of the SCO foreign ministers in Goa. Besides, assembly polls in several other states would also take place over the next few months, leading to the parliamentary elections in April-May 2024.

New Delhi has been maintaining that while it has all along been ready to hold discussions with Islamabad to resolve outstanding issues bilaterally within the framework of the 1972 Simla Agreement and the 1999 Lahore Declaration, any dialogue would make sense and yield progress only when Pakistan would stop the export of terror to India.

If Jaishankar and Bilawal hold a bilateral meeting in Goa, it would be the first ministerial engagement between the two nations after a long hiatus of seven-and-a-half years.

Pakistan Defence Minister Khwaja Muhammad Asif, however, is not travelling to New Delhi to attend another SCO meet, which his counterpart in the Government of India, Rajnath Singh, will host on Friday. He will take part in the conclave virtually.

Modi will host the SCO summit in New Delhi in July. India has already sent an invitation to Pakistan Prime Minister, Shehbaz Sharif, to attend the conclave.

Sharif’s brother M Nawaz Sharif’s visit to New Delhi to attend the swearing-in ceremony of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in May 2014 was the last visit by the head of the government of Pakistan. Jaishankar’s predecessor late Sushma Swaraj’s meeting with her counterpart and Sharif’s advisor on foreign affairs, Sartaj Aziz, in Islamabad in December 2015 was the last bilateral meeting between the top diplomats of the two nations. Aziz’s visit to Amritsar for a multilateral meeting on Afghanistan in December 2016 was the last by a Foreign Minister or the equivalent of Pakistan to India. The complex relations between the two nations hit a new low over a series of attacks on India by terrorist organizations of Pakistan in 2016, the killing of India’s paramilitary personnel by the operatives of the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) of Pakistan and the retaliatory air strikes by India in February 2019, as well as Pakistan’s opposition to India’s move to strip Jammu and Kashmir of its special status and the reorganization of the state into two union territories in August 2019.

India at present holds the chair of the SCO, which was floated by Russia and China between 1996 and 2001 as a strategic counterweight to NATO-led by Europe and the US. India and Pakistan formally joined the bloc in 2017.