The Russian Foreign minister and his Chinese counterpart are also likely to participate in the upcoming SCO meet.
India will be holding the SCO summit and key ministerial meetings in Goa from the 4th of May. The chairmanship of the organization was transferred to India last September, making India welcome the nine member countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation next month in Goa.
The most talked about issue is that of the Pakistani Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, considering the precarious times he comes in, where Pakistan’s economic situation is no better than a pauper, and with IMF’s prolonged bailout, there are talks about possible bilateral talks that Bhutto-Zardari might want.
Bhutto-Zardari however responded that it should be looked upon as Pakistan’s commitment to the SCO charter and not as a bilateral one but in the context of the SCO. According to him, it is what Pakistan accords to the region in its foreign policy
In 2011, Pakistani foreign minister Hina Rabbani Khar visited India, thus making Bhutto-Zardari the first in nearly 12 years as a foreign minister to visit India. Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari will be leading the Pakistani delegation to the Foreign ministers’ meeting. The Spokesperson of the Pakistan Foreign Office Mumtaz Zahra Baloch said that their foreign minister will be visiting the SCO-CFM meeting at the invitation of the External Affairs Minister S.Jaishankar.
India has officially sent invitations to all the member countries of the SCO. The nine-member organisation includes India, Russia, China, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Iran is the new member of the organisation attending the meeting for the first time. The last meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation was held in Samarkand, Uzbekistan.
Nevertheless, Arindam Bagchi the spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs said that it would not be appropriate to look at the participation of any one particular country. He added that it would be premature to point out any bilateral meetings between the two countries although the External Affairs Minister does try to hold as many bilateral meetings as he can on the margins of such multilateral meetings.
Cross-border terrorism, abrogation of Article 370, and the POK remain burning among the two countries, whereas China has its string of pearls, CPEC to disturb the tranquillity between them. Although China has shown no support to aiding Pakistan’s economy and shut one of its offices in Pakistan, tattered Pakistan still loves its all-weather alliance. The Pakistani Prime minister even said that they are a nation with nuclear power in one hand and a begging bowl in the other.
The Russia-Ukraine war and the economic situation of nations might be discussed in the upcoming meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers(CFO). India will be hosting the SCO Defence Ministers meeting from 27th to 29th April in Delhi. As the chair of the organisation, India will have to play a vital role in shaping the agendas of the meetings and promoting cooperation among nations, they will also be scrutinized by the international community to analyze the geopolitical landscape in the region to shape their policies.
The twenty-one-year-old organization greatly benefits from India’s membership, it lends credibility to the organisation. It cannot be denigrated on the grounds that it is a group of authoritarian countries working against the international order. Russian and Central Asia see India as a non-threatening power and India acts as a benevolent player in the region.
