New Delhi will keep Islamabad out of BRICS regional meet

RILED BY Islamabad’s global outreach on Kashmir, New Delhi is planning to isolate Pakistan in the global arena on the issue of terrorism.

Top government sources told The Indian Express that Pakistan will be excluded from the BRICS regional outreach this time, to be held in Goa on October 15-16. “Pakistan will not be part of the regional outreach,” said sources.

India will also raise the issue of terrorism with the international community at the G-20 summit in China next week, followed by the NAM summit in Venezuela and the UNGA in September-end.

BRICS has a tradition of having an outreach event with the region where the host country is located. At Fortaleza in Brazil, Latin American countries were called for an outreach in 2014, which was Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s first multilateral outing. In 2015, Russia had invited all the Central Asian countries for an outreach event in Ufa.

This time, instead of the SAARC countries, which includes Pakistan, the government has decided to invite the BIMSTEC countries.

This is a significant change of approach since Prime Minister Modi’s initial days after assuming office, when he had invited all SAARC leaders, including Pakistan PM Nawaz Sharif, for the oath-taking ceremony.

BIMSTEC stands for the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multisectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) and includes Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Bhutan and Nepal.