J&K terror attack casts a shadow of uncertainty over Indian and Pakistani foreign ministers meeting in Goa

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

Bilawal is expected to visit Goa to take part in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) foreign ministers’ meeting on May 4-5.

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

Read also | Pakistani Minister Bilawal to visit India for SCO meeting

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

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

Before taking a call about the Jaishankar-Bilawal meeting on the sidelines of the SCO conclave in Goa, the Modi government is also expected to take note of the state assembly elections in Karnataka, with the ruling Bharatiya Janata party facing a tough challenge from Congress and the Janata Dal (Secular). The state will go to the polls on May 10, just days after the SCO foreign ministers meet in Goa. In addition, parliamentary elections would also take place in several other states in the coming months, leading up to parliamentary elections in April-May 2024.

New Delhi has maintained that while it has always been ready to hold talks with Islamabad to resolve outstanding issues bilaterally under the 1972 Simla Agreement and the 1999 Lahore Declaration, any talks would make sense and produce progress only when Pakistan gave up of 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.

However, Pakistani Defense Minister Khwaja Muhammad Asif will not be traveling to New Delhi to attend another SCO meeting, which his Indian government counterpart Rajnath Singh will host on Friday. He will participate in the conclave virtually.

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

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

India currently holds the presidency of the SCO, which was proposed by Russia and China between 1996 and 2001 as a strategic counterweight to the European- and US-led NATO. India and Pakistan formally joined the bloc in 2017.