Restoring relations with India could be a big success story for the under-fire Shehbaz Sharif government amid Pakistan's economic woes, an international relations pundit based in the Islamic country has said.
According to Shahzad Masood Roomi, a Lahore-based geopolitical commentator and Editor of the strategic affairs website Global Conflict Watch (GCW), Islamabad indeed seeking engagement with New Delhi to normalise bilateral ties but the success of these measures depends on the willingness of both parties to engage with each other.
"Traditionally, Kashmir used to be the only big issue between India and Pakistan but in the last couple of decades terrorism, water, etc. also have added to the complexity of the bilateral equation," Roomi told Sputnik India on Monday.
Roomi observed that SCO is an important regional platform and its summits provide opportunities for the leaders of member states to sit together and talk on important regional issues.
However, even if PM Modi himself does attend the summit, there are little chances of him engaging directly with the Pakistani counterpart.
"The Sharif government is in a tight spot locally, due to economic mismanagement, [so] it needs something to showcase as success and restoring ties with India can be one of these but will it succeed? Only time will tell," the pundit reckoned.
Meanwhile, Syed Khalid Muhammad, the Executive Director of CommandEleven, a Pakistani national think tank based in Rawalpindi, opined that the invitation to attend the SCO meeting is another attempt at normalising relations.
For Pakistan, the core issue is Kashmir and until there is a resolution on that, normalisation is very difficult to achieve. On the other hand, India is concerned about cross-border terrorism in Kashmir, suspecting Pakistan's role in it, which doesn't help matters.
"The best option for both is to devise a strategy to counter and conquer the issues that keep both nations from finding normalisation, and begin the process of bringing peace between both these nuclear power states," Khalid Muhammad concluded.
Diplomatic relations between India and Pakistan have remained entirely frozen after the former's move to strip the semi-autonomous region of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) of its special status in 2019.
While both nations claim Kashmir in its entirety, they each administer different parts of the region.