By: Shubham Ghosh
Pakistani foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari will visit India in May to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) foreign ministers’ meeting in the western Indian state of Goa, Pakistan’s foreign office has said.
This will be the first visit by a key Pakistani leader to India since former prime minister Nawaz Sharif reached New Delhi for the inauguration of prime minister Narendra Modi in May 2014.
The foreign ministers’ meeting will be held on May 4 and 5.
India assumed the rotating presidency of the SCO, which also includes powers such as China and Russia, at the 2022 summit of the bloc held in Samarkand in Uzbekistan in September. It will host the next summit of the council of the organisation’s heads of state this year.
Bhutto Zardari, 34, is a leader of the Pakistan People’s Party and the son of late Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto and former president Asif Ali Zardari.
Bhutto Zardari took over as the foreign minister in Pakistan’s current coalition government led by prime minister Shehbaz Sharif in April last year.