Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari was welcomed on Friday by his Indian counterpart Dr S Jaishankar at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Council of Foreign Ministers moot in Goa.
“I am very happy that today I have arrived here leading the delegation of Pakistan,” Bilawal had told reporters on Thursday upon his arrival.
Bilawal is the first senior Pakistani leader to visit India since 2016 amid longstanding tensions between the large, nuclear-armed South Asian rivals.
The most recent visit to India by a high-ranking Pakistan diplomat was in 2016, when Sartaj Aziz — then the senior foreign affairs adviser to the prime minister — travelled there.
The SCO is a political and security union of countries spanning much of Eurasia, including China, India and Russia. Formed in 2001 by Russia, China and ex-Soviet states in Central Asia, the body has been expanded to include India and Pakistan.
On Thursday, Bilawal also met his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov on the sidelines SCO summit.
The two foreign ministers discussed bilateral, regional and international matters of mutual interest and assured each other of working closely to further deepen cooperation between their countries in the areas of food security, energy and people-to-people contact.
“The SCO opens new vistas of cooperation and coordination with Russia,” the Foreign Office said.
Separately at the SCO, Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang assured his Russian and Indian counterparts of deepening bilateral ties, promising that “coordination and cooperation” will only grow stronger, in a show of solidarity with two of China’s biggest neighbours.
During his meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on the sidelines of the SCO meeting, Qin said China is “willing to maintain communication and coordination with Russia to make tangible contributions to the political settlement of the crisis” in Ukraine.
The two sides also agreed to strengthen communication and coordination with other SCO member-states and maintain the bloc’s “unity”, according to a statement from the Chinese foreign ministry on Friday.
They additionally agreed to strengthen coordination in the Asia-Pacific, the ministry said, without giving details. Currently the bloc includes Russia, India, China, Pakistan and four Central Asian countries – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.