Lagatar24 Desk
New Delhi, July 27: Jaishankar, the minister of external affairs, will go on a two-day trip to the Uzbek capital Tashkent tomorrow to attend a Shanghai Cooperation Organization foreign ministerial conclave (SCO).
The SCO meeting is also anticipated to be attended by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, and their Pakistani counterparts Bilawal Bhutto.
It is anticipated that Jaishankar will meet privately with a few of his SCO counterparts, including Wang and Lavrov.
The SCO summit in September, set for September 15–16 in Samarkand, will be discussed at the SCO Foreign Ministers’ meeting, according to the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), which announced Jaishankar’s visit.
“External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar will visit Uzbekistan on July 28-29 at the invitation of Acting Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Uzbekistan Vladimir Norov to take part in the meeting of the SCO Council of Foreign Ministers,” the MEA said in a statement.
“The meeting will discuss preparations for the upcoming meeting of the Council of Heads of State on September 15-16 in Samarkand,” it said.
According to the MEA, the foreign ministers would discuss ongoing SCO expansion cooperation and discuss regional and global trends of shared interest. One of the biggest transregional international organisations, the SCO is a significant economic and security bloc. In 2017, India and Pakistan were admitted as permanent members.
The Presidents of Russia, China, the Kyrgyz Republic, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan established the SCO at a conference in Shanghai in 2001. India has expressed a strong desire to strengthen its security-related cooperation with the SCO and its Regional Anti-Terrorism Structure (RATS), which focuses on security and defense-related problems.
