No formal meeting held between Dar, Jaishankar during SCO meet: Pak FM

Pakistan on Thursday said no formal meeting took place between Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar and External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on the sidelines of a conclave of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) here last week.

"It is customary for delegations in multilateral settings to exchange pleasantries and hold informal conversations over lunch and dinner, especially between the host and the guests who are participating," Foreign Office Spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch said.

"There has been no formal meeting between Pakistan and India at the foreign ministers level, including at the SCO," she said in response to a question at her weekly press briefing here.

Jaishankar travelled to Pakistan last week to attend the SCO meeting, becoming the first Indian foreign minister to visit Pakistan in nearly a decade.

During his visit, Jaishankar and Dar held casual conversations on two occasions, but there was no indication of any thaw in the frosty bilateral relations, according to sources.

Baloch said that Pakistan has renewed an agreement with India to facilitate the visit of Indian pilgrims to Gurdwara Darbar Sahib Kartarpur, Narowal, through the Kartarpur Sahib Corridor for five years.

She reiterated that Pakistan will continue to extend political, diplomatic and moral support to the Kashmiri people.

She said Pakistan has applied for Brics membership. "We hope that Brics will move forward on Pakistan's request in line with its commitment to inclusive multilateralism," she said.

She, however, acknowledged that Pakistan was not invited to the Brics summit held this week in the Russian city of Kazan.

Brics, consisting of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, has now expanded with five additional members - Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE.