NEW DELHI: Pakistan on Saturday named Climate Change Minister Musadik Masood Malik to represent it at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Civilisational Dialogue Forum in New Delhi later this month. This will mark the first visit by a Pakistani minister to India since Operation Sindoor and in over three years.
“The Government of Pakistan remains committed to promoting dialogue among civilisations and fostering people-to-people contacts within the SCO framework in a spirit of mutual respect,” the statement from Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs read.
India had invited Pakistan’s Minister for National Heritage and Culture, Aurangzeb Khan Khichi, to the forum, which will be held from November 20 to 22. The invitation was the first New Delhi has extended to a Pakistani minister since Operation Sindoor, which the government has said remains ongoing.
The Pakistani statement announcing Malik’s nomination did not explain why he had been selected instead of Khichi.
The announcement came a day after Union Culture Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat said he was “hopeful” that Pakistan would confirm its participation.
Asked about the invitation last month, Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal had said, “As per established practice, we have invited all SCO members.”
The forum is an Indian initiative. Prime Minister Narendra Modi proposed it at the SCO summit in Tianjin in September last year and it was subsequently included in the declaration adopted at this year’s summit in Bishkek. More than 25 countries, including SCO members and dialogue partners, are expected to attend.
Malik will be the first Pakistani minister to travel to India since then Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari attended the SCO Council of Foreign Ministers meeting in Goa in May 2023. Relations between the two countries have sharply deteriorated since then, particularly following the Pahalgam terror attack and the subsequent retaliation by India in the form of Operation Sindoor.
The SCO, however, remains one of the few platforms where the two sides continue to engage. Pakistan assumed the grouping’s rotating chairmanship for 2026-27 at the Bishkek summit on September 1 and will host the leaders’ summit in Islamabad in August 2027.
India’s SCO National Coordinator Alok Dimri travelled to Islamabad in late September for the first meeting of national coordinators under Pakistan’s chairmanship.