India move surprises Pakistan, other SCO members

Official says Xi, Putin's lack of confirmation to attend event may be reason to hold it virtually

ISLAMABAD:

Pakistan and other members of Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) were surprised over the India’s sudden move to host the summit in July virtually instead of in-person.

“It was a surprise for everyone,” said a Foreign Office official reacting to the announcement by New Delhi.

The official, while speaking on the condition of anonymity, told The Express Tribune that Pakistan came to know about the decision through a letter written by India to SCO members including Islamabad on Tuesday.

The official said Pakistan’s initial perception was that India decided not to hold the summit in-person possibly because of the lack of confirmation by Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to attend the event in New Delhi.

If both the Chinese and Russian presidents skipped the summit in-person, that would have been a diplomatic embarrassment for India, according to the official.

This was probably the reason that led New Delhi to hold the summit virtually.

Another source said there could be a Pakistan factor too.

Given what happened in Goa during the meeting of the SCO Council of Foreign Ministers, India might have felt that if the Pakistani prime minister attended the summit in New Delhi, this would overshadow the proceedings of the organisation.

There would have also been a lot of international headlines on whether or not Pakistani and Indian leaders would meet on the sidelines of the summit.

The source added that this was exactly what India wanted to avoid.

Nevertheless, other sources said India’s border tension with China and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine might have also played a role in New Delhi’s decision.

India seemed to be not interested in hosting Russian and Chinese leaders -- the adversaries of the West and the US -- at this juncture.

The Indian media reported that at a time when New Delhi was engaging intensively with the West in the hope of receiving cutting edge technology, the arrival of its adversaries in the country would have complicated the matter.

Other reports, however, said as India would host these leaders in September on the occasion of the G20 summit, it would not make any difference if the SCO leaders met via video link.

India is the current president of the SCO, which comprises Russia, China, Pakistan and key Central Asian states.

India assumed the rotating chairmanship of the SCO at the Samarkand Summit on September 16, 2022.

The Indian external affairs ministry on Tuesday said in a statement that the summit would be held virtually on July 4.

The statement confirmed that all SCO member states -- including China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan -- were invited to attend the summit.