18 months after Operation Sindoor, India invites Pakistan for SCO event in Delhi

India has invited all 10 countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), including Pakistan, for the bloc’s inaugural Civilisational Dialogue Forum to be held in Delhi from November 20-22, officials aware of the matter said on Tuesday.

Pakistan last attended the SCO’s foreign ministers’ meeting in Goa in May 2023.

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All SCO members have been invited for the dialogue and the multilateral initiative has nothing to do with bilateral relations with Pakistan, the officials said, adding that the development should be viewed in the broader context. Pakistan’s national heritage and culture minister Aurangzeb Khan Khichi has been invited, HT learns.

India holds stand on terror despite bilateral meetings

Prime Minister Narendra Modi proposed the dialogue at the SCO leaders’ Summit in Tianjin last year. External affairs minister S Jaishankar visited Pakistan in October 2024 for the SCO Council Heads of Government meeting, becoming the first Indian foreign minister to visit Pakistan in nine years.

Organised jointly by the ministries of culture and external affairs, the SCO event’s invitation to Pakistan comes nearly 18 months after Operation Sindoor, the four-day military confrontation triggered by the Pahalgam terror attack that killed 26 people. Between the launch of the operation in the early hours of May 7 and the ceasefire on May 10 evening, Indian forces bombed nine terror camps in Pakistan and PoK, killing at least 100 terrorists, and the Indian Air Force struck targets at 13 Pakistani airbases and military installations.

India recently hit out at Pakistan over backing terror during an SCO meeting.

On October 20, defence minister Rajnath Singh called for joint action to dismantle terrorism, asserting that there can be no justification for the scourge or double standards in tackling it, in a pointed message delivered in the presence of Pakistan’s deputy PM and defence minister Ishaq Dar at the 25th meeting of SCO council of heads of government at Dushanbe in Tajikistan.