Days after India-Pakistan sparring at UN, senior Indian official visits Islamabad for SCO planning meet
An Indian delegation led by Alok Dimri attended a preparatory meeting in Islamabad for the upcoming 2027 Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit. This visit marks a rare instance of high-level diplomatic engagement between India and Pakistan following recent tensions at the UN.
Why it matters
The visit signals a potential, albeit cautious, attempt at diplomatic engagement between the two nuclear-armed neighbors within a multilateral framework.
Pakistan announced that it would host the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit in August 2027, as an Indian delegation led by a senior MEA official attended a preparatory meeting in Islamabad—the first such official Indian visit to Pakistan since Operation Sindoor last year.
The three-day meeting of SCO National Coordinators that began on Monday (September 29, 2026) comes days after India and Pakistan sparred with each other over the issue of terrorism and the Kashmir dispute at the UN General Assembly (UNGA). External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif traded allegations in their national addresses, while Indian and Pakistani diplomats exercised their rights of reply to the speeches on the global stage last week.
On Tuesday (September 29, 2026), India also rejected Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s reference to Kashmir in his UNGA speech.
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