Why PM Modi should not attend SCO summit in Pakistan – News 24

The 23rd Heads of Government (HOG) Session of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) will be held on October 15-16, 2024 in Islamabad, Pakistan. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was invited by his Pakistani counterpart and host of the meeting to participate in this conclave. The prime ministers of most of the other nine SCO member countries are expected to attend the meeting in person. No response seems to have been received from Pakistan so far regarding PM Modis' presence at the HOG summit. Some reports in India speculated that Foreign Minister S Jaishankar would be tasked with representing Prime Minister Modi at the summit.

Relations between New Delhi and Islamabad have been particularly at their lowest since 2019, which saw the Balakot strikes after the Pulwama attack in February 2019 and the abrogation of Article 370 in August 2019. The principled position of the India has been very clear. No talks between the two parties can be envisaged without the cessation of the terror exercised by Pakistan against India. No evidence of a change in policy or strategy aimed at inciting terrorism in India by Pakistan is discernible. In these circumstances, Prime Minister Modi's presence could send the message of an incipient thaw in relations between the two countries. This would send a very bad signal to the national and global community.

In light of the above situation, it would be pertinent to discuss whether Prime Minister Modi should attend the HOG Islamabad Summit in October 2024.

India's role in the SCO

India has actively participated in SCO meetings at the summit as well as ministerial and official levels. The SCO is considered a useful platform for India as it provides it with an opportunity to connect with the top leaders of the four Central Asian countries that are members of the SCO. Summit-level interactions also provide opportunities to meet and interact with leaders of other member countries and observers of the organization.

For example, Prime Minister Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping exchanged a few words on the sidelines of the SCO Astana Heads of State Summit (HOS) in August 2017, as the confrontation at the Doklam junction reached its climax. paroxysm. It was during this exchange that the Astana Consensus was set out, aiming to prevent differences from turning into disputes. A few years later, meetings between the defense and foreign ministers of India and their Chinese counterparts took place in September 2020 in Moscow on the sidelines of the SCO defense and foreign ministers' meetings. . These meetings took place soon after the incident in Galwan in eastern Ladakh. These meetings provided useful opportunities to exchange views, assess each other's position on these important and sensitive issues, and discuss ways to move forward.

India's participation in some recent summits and meetings has been seen as less than optimal. A little deeper reflection, however, would reveal that, in these circumstances, the decisions adopted were the most appropriate.

India has been criticized for hosting the Heads of State Summit (HOS) in July 2023 in an online format, although several countries, notably in Central Asia and Iran, have publicly confirmed that their presidents will attend in person at the summit in New Delhi.

India made a last-minute decision to host the summit virtually, although a hybrid summit could also have been held. Media speculated that India took this decision because no positive confirmation had been provided by the Chinese government regarding President Xi Jinping's in-person participation in the Delhi summit.

Moreover, considering the unworthy and indecent behavior of Pakistani Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto during the SCO Foreign Ministers' Meeting in Goa in May 2023, it was felt that it might be embarrassing to host Pakistani Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif in New Delhi, as he might also decide to play to the gallery and indulge in unseemly and unseemly behavior. It must be taken into account that if the Chinese president and the Pakistani prime minister decided to attend the summit in person, all the media attention would be focused on them and on bilateral issues and not on the substantive decisions and debates. from the top.

Moreover, the presence of the Presidents of Russia, Iran and Belarus together on Indian soil would not have given a good impression, especially immediately after Prime Minister Modi's highly successful state visit to the States. -United States in June 2023, during which he also addressed the joint session of the US Congress for the second time, an honor bestowed on only a handful of world leaders.

Under the current circumstances, India has taken a wise and prudent decision to host the 2023 SCO Heads of State Summit in a virtual format. India tried to compensate for the fact that it was not an in-person meeting by making the content much richer and broader.

Most recently, Prime Minister Modi did not travel to Astana, Kazakhstan to attend the July 4, 2024 heads of state summit. Instead, EAM Jaishankar was tasked to replace the Prime Minister . Furthermore, Prime Minister Modi declined the Kazakh request for a virtual summit address due to his domestic concerns over the ongoing work of Parliament, which was holding its first session after the recent elections, which returned Prime Minister Modi consecutively for a third term.

At the ministerial level, India's Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal did not attend the 23rd SCO Commerce Ministers' Meeting in Islamabad on September 12, 2024. Instead, Secretary of Commerce and Industry Commerce, Sunil Barthwal, participated virtually. Most SCO trade ministers participated in this meeting in person.

All the above examples seem to suggest that India's interest in the SCO has waned. This would be an inaccurate assessment. There were compelling reasons, as noted above, for India to take the steps it did. However, India needs to make significant additional efforts to eliminate this misplaced perception, especially among leaders and officials of Central Asian countries. The first action in this direction would be to host the in-person meeting between Prime Minister Modi and the five heads of state of Central Asian countries (India + C5) as soon as possible.

Should PM Modi attend SCO HOG summit in Islamabad?

The SCO Council of Heads of Government is the group's second-highest body. Over the past seven years, since India became a full member of the SCO in 2017, India has been represented at the Foreign Minister or Defense Minister level at the HOG meetings of the SCO. 'OCS. EAM Jaishankar attended the SCO HOG meeting in Bishkek last year. In 2020, when India hosted the SCO Heads of Government Meeting online due to the raging Covid-19 pandemic, Pakistan was represented by its Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs.

Prime Minister Modi has regularly attended and participated in the meetings of the SCO's apex body, the Heads of State Summits (HOS). He attended the HOS Summits in Ufa, Russia, in 2015; in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, in 2016; in Astana, Kazakhstan, in 2017; in Qingdao, China, in 2018; in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, in 2019; and in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, in 2022. He participated virtually in the summits in 2020 and 2021. India hosted the HOS summit online in July 2023.

It is worth noting that in the last seven years, since India became a full member of the SCO, Prime Minister Modi has personally participated in the HOS summits and not the HOG summits, which were attended by the EAM or the Minister of Defense.

Conclusion

Given past practice, it would be appropriate for EAM to represent Prime Minister Modi at the HOG summit in Islamabad on October 15-16, 2024. Remarks from some analysts, notably from Pakistan, expressing the affectionate but unrealistic hope that the Prime Minister Modi's ability to attend the summit in person, which could signal a thaw in bilateral relations, is inappropriate and untenable. As noted above, this would go against past practices and, given the strained relations between India and Pakistan, mainly due to Pakistan's support for terrorist activities in India, such a move by the leaders Indians is inconceivable.

The author is a member of the Executive Council of the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defense Studies and Analysis, President of the Institute of Global Studies, Distinguished Member of the Ananta Aspen Center and former Ambassador of India to Kazakhstan, in Sweden and Latvia. The opinions expressed in the article above are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Firstpost.