Bilawal Bhutto becomes first Pakistani foreign minister to visit India in 12 years

Category : International Published on: May 08 2023

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Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, Pakistan's foreign minister, arrived in Goa to attend a conference organized by the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO).
This makes him the first senior leader from Pakistan to visit India in almost 12 years.
The last time such a visit occurred was in 2011 when Pakistan's former foreign minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, visited India.
Khar is currently serving as the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs.
In May 2014, former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif visited India to attend the swearing-in ceremony of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
India and Pakistan have not had any substantive dialogue or engagement since the 2008 Mumbai attacks, carried out by Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba.
The 2019 Pulwama suicide attack that killed 40 Indian troopers and the Indian government’s decision to scrap Jammu and Kashmir’s special status in August of the same year took bilateral ties to an all-time low.
The last Indian foreign minister to visit Pakistan was the late Sushma Swaraj, who travelled to Islamabad in December 2015.