PM Modi’s Meeting With Major Leaders at the SCO Summit

After landing in Samarkand for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be meeting with the leaders of major nations in Central Asia, beginning the formal diplomatic dialogue between the nations after two years of interference because of the pandemic. 

The PM will be meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The two leaders will discuss strategic stability, the situation in the Asia-Pacific Region, and bilateral cooperation within the UN and G20. 

This will also be the first time that the leaders of China, Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, will come face-to-face after the clashes on LAC in 2020. According to the external affairs ministries of both nations, there has been no report of the two leaders holding bilateral talks on the sidelines of the summit. 

The Prime Minister will also meet with the leaders of Central Asian nations who are present at the summit, like Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, as well as the observer nations who are in attendance, such as Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. 

This is the first time that the SCO meeting is being held in person after the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The SCO summit will have two sessions. One of them will be restricted to the member nations, and the other will be held alongside observer nations and special invitees. 

The SCO is an economic, political, and security organization that consists of eight nations: China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, India, and Pakistan. It was launched in 2001 in Shanghai, hence the name.