PM Modi to attend SCO summit with Xi and Putin
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Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be travelling to Uzbekistan for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit on September 15 and 16. He will be meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, and Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi.
This is the first in-person summit after the 2019 SCO summit held in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.
The summit is being held in Samarkand. Nation leaders are expected to hold bilateral meetings even though nothing has been officially scheduled yet. PM Modi and President Xi haven't had a face-to-face bilateral since November 2019 BRICS summit in Brazil. The face-off between troops along the Line of Actual Control in eastern Ladakh since May 2020 has caused a setback between India and China.
Until now, there has been no official communication between India and Pakistan about a bilateral meeting. Uzbekistan President Shavkat Mirziyoyev will be meeting with the Indian Prime Minister.
PM Modi may hold a meeting with Russian President Putin and discuss the geopolitical situation caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Taliban rule in Afghanistan is likely to be another hot topic as many of the attending nations are neighbours of the struggling country.
The SCO was founded in 2001 and mainly focuses on regional security issues including terrorism, ethnic separatism, and religious extremism. India is set to assume the rotational presidency of the SCO at the end of this week's summit. Delhi will hold the presidency until September 2023 and host the summit next year.
It currently has eight Member States - China, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Four Observer States - Afghanistan, Belarus, Iran, and Mongolia - are interested in acceding full membership. The inter-governmental organisation also has six Dialogue Partners - Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Turkey.
In 2021, SCO decided to start the process to make Iran a full member. Egypt, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia were chosen to be dialogue partners.