Former Pakistan Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto will be leading a nine-member delegation, which will be visiting New York.
| Photo Credit: AP
In what appears to be a move to copy India’s outreach to countries after the four-day conflict and May 10 ceasefire after Operation Sindoor, Pakistan on Monday (June 2, 2025) sent parliamentary delegations to various capitals to discuss its version of events, call for an international “role” in the region, and plead its case for the restoration of the Indus Waters Treaty, suspended by India after the Pahalgam terror attack.
Unlike the seven Indian delegations, comprising 59 MPs and former diplomats that are visiting a total of 33 countries, the two Pakistani delegations will visit only five capitals, with a nine-member delegation led by former Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto going to New York, Washington DC, London, and Brussels, where the European Union headquarters is located. Another delegation led by Special Assistant to Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Syed Tariq Fatemi travelled to Moscow on Monday, indicating a special emphasis by Pakistan on engaging Russia.
At the same time in U.S.
Significantly, both the Indian delegation led by Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, and the Pakistani delegation led by Mr. Bhutto will be in Washington over the next few days, and are expected to meet members of the U.S. Congress, which will be in session this week. While Indian MPs will return to New Delhi this week, the Pakistani delegation that includes former Ministers Sherry Rehman, Hina Rabbani Khar and Khurram Dastgir Khan, is travelling from June 2-18 to the Western countries. Two former Foreign Secretaries will accompany them.
Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson said the delegations had been directed by Prime Minister Sharif to “present Pakistan’s perspective on recent Indian aggression and Pakistan’s measured and responsible conduct”, referring to India’s strikes on terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan on May 7 and the military escalation that followed.
“The delegations will underscore the imperative for the international community to play its due role in promoting a lasting peace in South Asia”, said an MFA statement issued in Islamabad. “The need for immediate resumption of the normal functioning of the Indus Waters Treaty will also be a key theme of the delegations’ outreach,” it added.
On April 23, a day after the Pahalgam attack in which 26 men, mostly Indian tourists, were shot dead by terrorists belonging to the Lashkar-e-Taiba front TRF group, India announced it was holding the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960 in abeyance “until Pakistan credibly and irrevocably abjures its support for cross-border terrorism”, amongst a number of other diplomatic measures. At an international conference in Tajikistan, Mr. Sharif accused India of holding “millions of lives…hostage to narrow political gains”.
Speaking in Colombia at a press briefing where Indian MPs were asked about the decision, Mr. Tharoor said: “The Indus Waters Treaty was offered by India to Pakistan in the early 1960s in a spirit of goodwill and harmony…But the time for acting on the basis of goodwill unilaterally is frankly no longer with us,” a stance he is expected to stress during the visit to Washington by the Indian delegation that begins on Tuesday.
Published – June 02, 2025 09:42 pm IST
