Pakistan announced on Thursday that it will host the SCO summit in October and will invite all leaders of SCO member states.
Pakistan Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch told a weekly press conference that Pakistan, which is the rotating chair of the SCO Group of Heads of Government (CHG), will host the SCO summit in October this year.
When asked whether Pakistan would invite Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Pakistan to attend a summit in the country,
“Pakistan is the chair country and therefore we will send invitations to all the leaders of SCO member states in our capacity as chair country,” Baloch replied.
“The meeting will be held in person and we hope that all SCO member states will be represented at the summit in October,” she said.
She said the October summit will be preceded by a ministerial meeting and several high-level official meetings focusing on financial, economic, socio-cultural and humanitarian cooperation between SCO member states.
Baloch also said Pakistan believes in maintaining good relations with all countries and will not take sides in international politics.
“Firstly, I want to make it clear that Pakistan has repeatedly said that it is not part of any bloc. We do not believe in bloc politics. We believe in good relations with all countries based on mutual respect, mutual trust and non-interference in each other’s internal affairs,” she said.
She said Pakistan categorically rejects the baseless allegations made about Pakistan in the recently released US State Department report on religious freedom and in principle Pakistan opposes such one-sided reports which give opinion on the internal affairs of a sovereign nation.
“We believe that international religious freedom cannot be viewed from the social and legal perspective of any one country,” the statement said.
The report said one-sided reports assessing the human rights situation in other countries are not free from political bias and present an incomplete and distorted picture, and that the methodologies used to prepare such reports, as well as the mandate and expertise of their authors, lack transparency.
“We strongly believe that states have the primary responsibility to promote and protect the religious rights and freedoms of their citizens,” she said, adding that Pakistanis have the right to freedom of religion and belief under the law and as enshrined in the Pakistani constitution.
She said that during Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s visit to Tajikistan this week, the two sides signed the Pakistan-Tajikistan Strategic Partnership Agreement based on five pillars of bilateral cooperation including politics, trade and investment, energy and connectivity, security and defence, and people-to-people contacts.
This will include structured high-level dialogue at the Heads of State and Foreign Minister levels.
She called the UN group’s report on Imran Khan unjustified, saying, “I wish to emphasise that the report on this particular case is unjustified as it lacks objectivity and is based on an incomplete and inaccurate understanding of Pakistan’s laws and justice system.”
The report said the case against Khan was politically motivated.
