India sends senior MEA official to Pakistan for SCO coordinators meet

India’s SCO Coordinator Alok Dimri, who is an Additional Secretary in the MEA, is attending the meeting in Islamabad.

A year and half after Operation Sindoor, India has sent a senior official from the Ministry of External Affairs to Pakistan for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) coordinators’ meeting, beginning Monday.

India’s SCO Coordinator Alok Dimri, who is an Additional Secretary in the MEA, is attending the meeting in Islamabad.

Delhi’s stance has been that while bilateral engagements need to take place in a conducive environment free from terrorism, it will engage with Pakistan under the format of the SCO.

The Indian government’s position has been that terror and talks can’t go together — especially so after the Pahalgam terror attack and the military confrontation between India and Pakistan in May last year under Operation Sindoor.

This week, from Monday to Wednesday, Pakistan is hosting the national coordinators of the SCO grouping in Islamabad to discuss the programme under Pakistan’s chairmanship and other organisational matters.

In a statement on Sunday, Pakistan’s Foreign Office said the first meeting of the SCO Council of National Coordinators (CNC), under Pakistan’s chairmanship of the SCO Council of Heads of State (CHS) for 2026-27, would be convened in Islamabad.

The meeting is being chaired by Pakistan’s national coordinator for SCO and attended by counterparts from member states, along with representatives of the SCO Secretariat.

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“The national coordinators would discuss a wide range of issues relating to SCO cooperation and coordination, including the programme of activities under Pakistan’s chairmanship, preparations for upcoming SCO meetings and events, and other matters on the agenda,” the Pakistan Foreign Office said.

Pakistan will seek to advance the SCO’s objectives under the theme ‘Turning Vision into Action: Conne­ctivity, Innovation and Shared Prosperity’.

Pakistan’s National Coordinator for SCO, Dr M Faisal, is chairing the meeting, officials said. The Indian delegation’s presence marks New Delhi’s participation in a SCO meeting in Pakistan after almost two years.

Sources said that India wants to engage with SCO, and that is the reason behind sending the SCO coordinator to Pakistan.

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Pakistan is likely to invite Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the summit.

Shubhajit Roy, Diplomatic Editor at The Indian Express, has been a journalist for more than 27 years now. Roy joined The Indian Express in October 2003 and has been reporting and writing explainers and analysis on foreign affairs for about 19 years now. Based in Delhi, he has also led the National government and political bureau at The Indian Express in Delhi — a team of reporters who cover the national government and politics for the newspaper. He has got the Ramnath Goenka Journalism award for Excellence in Journalism ‘2016. He got this award for his coverage of the Holey Bakery attack in Dhaka and its aftermath. He won the Ramnath Goenka Journalism award, 2023, for the second time for his reporting of the Oct 7 attacks on Israel and the war in Gaza. He also got the IIMCAA Award for the Journalist of the Year, 2022, (Jury’s special mention) for his coverage of the fall of Kabul in August 2021 — he was one of the few Indian journalists in Kabul and the only mainstream newspaper to have covered the Taliban’s capture of power in mid-August, 2021. ... Read More