India’s Modi to be invited to SAARC summit: Pakistan

ISLAMABAD: The Foreign Ministry on Tuesday said that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi would be invited to Islamabad for the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit.

The previous summit in 2016 was cancelled after India backed out in the wake of Uri attack.

The last summit of the leaders of the eight SAARC countries was convened in Kathmandu in late 2014.

To a question, Foreign Office spokesman Dr Mohammad Faisal pitched for dialogue with New Delhi to solve all contentious issues.

“We fought a war with India, relations cannot be fixed quickly,” Faisal said.

So far, India’s refusal to engage Pakistan unless Islamabad addressed its concerns on cross-border terrorism has remained a sticky issue for holding the 19th SAARC summit.

SAARC Summits are usually held biennially hosted by a member state in alphabetical order. The member state hosting the summit assumes the Chair of the Association. Besides India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Afghanistan also declined to participate in the 2016 Islamabad meet. The Maldives and Sri Lanka are the seventh and eighth members of the initiative.