India foreign minister’s Pakistan visit a ‘good beginning’, Nawaz Sharif says

The visit of India’s foreign minister to Pakistan earlier this week was a “good beginning” that could lead to a thaw in relations between the two rivals, former Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was quoted as saying by Indian media on Friday.

Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar was in Pakistan on Tuesday and Wednesday for a meeting of governments of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, with the capital city under tight lockdown. “This is how talks move forward. Talks should not stop,” Sharif, the president of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League — Nawaz (PML-N), and the brother of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, told a group of visiting Indian journalists, the Indian Express newspaper reported.

Jaishankar was among nearly a dozen leaders participating in the gathering in Islamabad, nearly a decade since an Indian foreign minister has visited amid frosty relations between the two nuclear powers. Jaishankar and his counterpart Ishaq Dar had an “informal interaction,” an official in Pakistani foreign ministry said on Thursday, but New Delhi denied that any sort of meeting had taken place.

“We had made it very clear that this particular visit is for SCO head of government meeting. Other than that, there were some pleasantries exchanged on the sidelines of the meeting,” Indian foreign ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said on Thursday.

“We have lost the last 75 years and it is important we don’t lose the next 75 years,” Sharif was quoted as saying in the Times of India newspaper.