SCO Meet: Chinese, Russian Defence Ministers Will Join On 27

The SCO defence ministerial meeting is scheduled for April 27 and 28

Chinese Defence Minister Li Shangfu and his Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu are likely to attend a crucial meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) that India is hosting next week.

Amid the ongoing border conflict with China, the meeting is getting high importance and significance for India. According to officials, the SCO meeting shall be held in Delhi on April 27 and 28.

The meeting of the SCO foreign ministers will be held in India in May. The culmination of these conferences will be the SCO Summit, which will take place in July and be hosted for the first time by India since it joined the organisation in 2017.

BORDER DISPUTE WITH CHINA AND SCO MEETING

The border dispute between India and China in eastern Ladakh is about to enter its fourth year in early May, which coincides with Li’s visit to New Delhi for the SCO military ministers’ conference. After four rounds of withdrawal from Galwan Valley, Pangong Tso, Gogra (PP-17A), and Hot Springs (PP-15), the Indian and Chinese forces still each have more than 60,000 personnel stationed in the Ladakh theatre.

The disagreements at Depsang in the Demchok sector and Charding Nullah Junction (CNJ) in the Daulet Beg Oldi sector have not been addressed after 17 rounds of talks between the Indian and Chinese militaries.

Li is the first Chinese defence minister to visit India since the conflict in June 2020 at Galwan, which strained relations between the two countries. In the seven-hour bloody battle in Galwan Valley at Patrolling Point 14, twenty Indian soldiers were killed. Although Beijing officially reported that just four Chinese soldiers were killed, India estimated that the number of losses for the PLA was two times more than for the Indian Army.

On April 19, 2024, Singh stated negotiations would continue for a peaceful resolution of the ongoing dispute in the Ladakh region and that disengagement and de-escalation were the preferred course of action. Singh also expressed confidence in the Indian Army’s ability to manage any situation along the country’s border with China.

RUSSIA- INDIA IN SCO MEETING

Following the Russia-Ukraine conflict that broke out last year, Shoigu will be visiting India for the first time. The complications resulting from the extensive sanctions imposed on Russia by the US and its allies as a result of the conflict in Ukraine have created new difficulties for the defence relationship between India and Russia, tested India’s military readiness, and increased the urgency of reducing reliance on imported military hardware to maintain combat readiness.

India and Russia are still having trouble figuring out a reliable way to pay for their weapons contracts in the wake of US-led sanctions against Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine in February of last year. The delivery of the fourth and fifth squadrons of the S-400 Triumf surface-to-air missile systems to India has been considerably delayed as a result, among other things.

WILL PAKISTAN BE THERE FOR SCO

It is said that although there has been no official confirmation of Pakistani Defence Minister Khawaja Asif’s attendance in person at the SCO defence ministerial conference slated for April 27 and 28, he is expected to participate digitally.

THE SHANGHAI COOPERATION ORGANISATION (SCO)

An international organisation called the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) was established on June 15, 2001, in Shanghai. As of right now, the group consists of eight Member States (China, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan), four Observer States (Afghanistan, Belarus, Iran, and Mongolia), who are interested in becoming Full Members, and six “Dialogue Partners” (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Turkey). Egypt, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia were designated as dialogue partners in 2021, and it was resolved to start the process of Iran becoming a full member of it.

The SCO has mostly concentrated on regional security problems, its battle against regional terrorism, ethnic secession, and religious extremism since its founding in 2001.