Zardari is visiting the coastal Indian state of Goa to participate in the meeting of foreign ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization along with his Chinese and Russian counterparts.
Pakistani Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari arrived in India on Thursday to take part in an international conference, the first official visit by a senior Pakistani official to the eastern neighboring country since 2016.
The two neighbors have fought three wars since their founding following the division of the Indian peninsula in 1947, and relations between the two nuclear-armed countries have remained tense in the past few years, particularly over the disputed Kashmir region.
Zardari is visiting the coastal Indian state of Goa to participate in the meeting of foreign ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, along with his Chinese and Russian counterparts.
“I am very happy to be here at the head of the Pakistani delegation,” he told reporters.
He did not hint at the possibility of holding direct talks with his Indian counterpart, but said he hoped the SCO meeting would be “very successful”.
Pakistan suspended trade and diplomatic ties with India in 2019 when New Delhi imposed direct rule on its part of armed-majority Kashmir and implemented strict security measures.
The two countries withdrew their top diplomats, while many consular staff were expelled or withdrawn in reciprocal actions.
Those developments followed a military crisis earlier that year, also centered on Kashmir, that saw mutual air strikes and the downing of an Indian fighter jet.
The last visit by a senior Pakistani official to India was in 2016 when Sartaj Aziz, in his capacity as the then Advisor to the Prime Minister on External Affairs, went to New Delhi.
India currently holds the rotating presidency of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which was established in 2001 and is a political, economic and security organization competing with Western institutions.
Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar met his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, ahead of the meeting on Friday to discuss relations and “current global and regional agenda issues”.
Security relations between India and Russia go back a long time, and New Delhi has been put in a delicate diplomatic position after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has sought to strike a balance between India’s growing security cooperation with Western countries and its dependence on Russia for defense and oil imports.
On Thursday, Jaishankar met with Chinese Foreign Minister Chen Gang, a week after the two countries’ defense ministers met in New Delhi to discuss military deployment on their disputed border in the Himalayas.
“Focus remains on resolving outstanding issues and ensuring peace and tranquility in the border areas,” Jaishankar wrote on Twitter after the meeting.
