India, Pakistan foreign ministers to meet in New York

India and Pakistan are set to hold their first high-level bilateral meeting in three years, with External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj scheduled to meet her Pakistani counterpart Shah Mehmood Qureshi on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York later this month.

The meeting was agreed to following a request from Pakistan, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said on Thursday.

MEA spokesperson Raveesh Kumar confirmed that the two foreign ministers would meet at a mutually convenient date and time during the UNGA session.

“I can confirm that on the request from the Pakistani side a meeting between the two foreign ministers will take place on the sidelines of the UNGA at a mutually convenient date and time,” Kumar told reporters at the weekly briefing.

He said the Permanent Missions of India and Pakistan would work out the details of the meeting, including the schedule and arrangements.

Kumar, however, cautioned against viewing the proposed interaction as the formal resumption of the India-Pakistan dialogue process. He repeatedly described it as simply a meeting between the two ministers and said the government would not speculate about its agenda before the discussions take place.

The development followed a letter from Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in which Khan called for the resumption of dialogue and proposed a meeting between the two foreign ministers during the UNGA. Qureshi subsequently wrote to Swaraj regarding the proposed interaction.

The meeting will take place against the backdrop of strained relations between the two neighbours, with terrorism, cross-border firing and other security concerns continuing to affect bilateral ties.

India and Pakistan had previously agreed to revive their comprehensive dialogue process in 2015, when Swaraj met Pakistan's then Foreign Affairs Adviser Sartaj Aziz in Islamabad. Modi later made an unscheduled visit to Lahore on Christmas Day that year, briefly raising hopes of improved relations.

Those efforts suffered a major setback after the January 2016 terrorist attack on the Pathankot airbase. Relations have remained tense since then, with India repeatedly maintaining that meaningful dialogue cannot progress without an end to cross-border terrorism.

Kumar also confirmed that India would participate in a meeting of the foreign ministers of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc).

He said there had been no change in India's existing policy towards the Saarc process.

Meanwhile, tensions between the two countries were highlighted by a question about the reported killing of a Border Security Force (BSF) personnel following firing from the Pakistani side.

Kumar described the incident as “barbaric” and said the BSF had sent a strong communication to its Pakistani counterparts.

“It is a serious issue and we will take it up with Pakistan,” he said.

The proposed meeting in New York is therefore significant as the first direct foreign minister-level interaction between India and Pakistan in several years, although New Delhi has made it clear that the encounter should not automatically be interpreted as the restart of a formal peace dialogue.