Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif departed on Monday for a three-day official visit to Bishkek for the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), at the invitation of Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov (Geo News).
The visit runs from 31 August to 2 September, the Foreign Office said in a curtain-raiser issued the same morning (Express Tribune).
What Pakistan gets
Shehbaz will attend the SCO Council of Heads of State meeting and the wider SCO Plus summit, and will there assume Pakistan’s chairmanship of the Council for 2026-27, the Foreign Office said (Express Tribune, Arab News).
Dawn adds that next year’s CHS summit will as a result be hosted by Islamabad. No other outlet covering the trip says so, and no Foreign Office statement seen mentions it (Dawn).
The Prime Minister’s Office says he will address the summit and “present Pakistan’s stance on various regional and global issues.” Neither the PMO nor the Foreign Office has said what that stance will be.
He is also attending the opening ceremony of the World Nomad Games as a special guest.
The delegation
The Foreign Office curtain-raiser, as reported by the Express Tribune, lists Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar, Commerce Minister Jam Kamal Khan, Communications Minister Abdul Aleem Khan and Information Minister Ataullah Tarar — the information minister, not Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar — as travelling with the prime minister, along with senior officials (Express Tribune). Geo News carries the same list but attributes it to the Prime Minister’s Office rather than the Foreign Office (Geo News).
Dawn’s account of the delegation names Jam Kamal Khan, Abdul Aleem Khan and Ataullah Tarar, but not Dar (Dawn).
That omission is worth noting, because the same Foreign Office said on Sunday that Dar had arrived in Istanbul and would represent Pakistan there — with Defence Minister Khawaja Asif and Field Marshal Asim Munir — at the first meeting of the Strategic Political and Defence Committee set up under the Makkah Joint Defence Agreement, held in Istanbul on Monday (Geo News, Express Tribune). Nothing published so far reconciles the two: whether Dar is in Bishkek, and when, has not been addressed.
Who else is in Bishkek
The Kyrgyz presidency’s own list of participants, published by the Bishkek agency 24.kg, names Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, among others; UN Secretary-General António Guterres is listed separately, among the heads of international organisations (24.kg). Xi arrived on Sunday on a state visit and held talks with Japarov on Monday; Modi landed on Monday morning from Tashkent (24.kg, 24.kg).
Twenty-one presidents and prime ministers are expected in the capital, 24.kg reported separately, citing official information (24.kg). The heads-of-state meeting itself is on 1 September, and is due to produce a Bishkek Declaration marking the SCO’s 25th anniversary.
Pezeshkian’s presence puts Iran’s leader in the room a day after US forces struck two rocket launchers on Iran’s Larak Island — the first known American strike on Iran since late July — and Iran fired on two US bases in Jordan (Arab News). The Kyrgyz presidency’s published agenda does not name that confrontation: it says leaders will discuss “pressing issues on the international and regional agenda” and cooperation in trade, transport, digital and environmental fields. No Pakistani or Kyrgyz statement seen so far commits the summit to taking it up.
The SCO now has 10 member states — India, Iran, China, Pakistan, Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, per Dawn’s count. Arab News, reporting the same trip, still describes an eight-member organisation (Arab News).
The bilaterals
Shehbaz will hold meetings with leaders of participating countries on the sidelines, the Foreign Office said, on “mutual relations, trade and investment, regional cooperation.” It has not named a single counterpart.
The one confirmed bilateral is with Japarov, on 2 September, the last day. That covers trade, energy, regional connectivity, education and tourism — the same file the two countries opened when Japarov visited Pakistan in December 2025 and, the Express Tribune reports, agreed a $200 million bilateral trade target for 2027-28. No other outlet covering this trip carries that figure (Express Tribune).
President Asif Ali Zardari made a four-day visit to Kyrgyzstan in July, also reported by the Express Tribune alone among the outlets covering this trip. Whether Shehbaz’s sideline diary produces anything beyond the Japarov meeting will not be clear until Bishkek publishes it.
