Bilateral talks between India and Russia will take place in Samarkand.

New Delhi: PM Narendra Modi will leave for Samarkand, Uzbekistan today to participate in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit. It is believed that PM Modi may meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin and other leaders at a dinner hosted by Uzbekistan President Shavkat Mirziyoyev. Let us tell you that on September 15 and 16, there is SCO Summit in Samarkand.

However, suspense remains on whether or not there will be a bilateral meeting between PM Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping, as no confirmation has been made about it so far. According to the Times of India news, official sources, however, did not rule out the meeting and said that the bilateral meetings of PM Modi have not been fully finalized yet. PM Modi will be in the same room with Xi during the SCO summit on at least two occasions. That is, there is a suspense on whether PM Modi and Jinping will meet but there will be talks or not.

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Meanwhile, Russia has confirmed the bilateral meeting with PM Modi on Friday. Russia said that during the bilateral meeting between PM Modi and Putin, issues such as strategic stability, the status of the Asia Pacific region and cooperation in major multilateral formats such as the United Nations, G20 and SCO will be discussed. It is being told that PM Modi will also hold a bilateral meeting with Iranian President Ibrahim Raisi and the President of Uzbekistan.

The Ministry of External Affairs issued a statement
Here, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs issued a statement saying that the summit will be attended by leaders of SCO member countries, observer countries, Secretary General of SCO, Executive Director of SCO Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure (RATS), President of Turkmenistan and other invited guests. The Ministry of External Affairs said that the Prime Minister is also likely to hold some bilateral meetings on the sidelines of the summit.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister will also attend
Apart from Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Pakistani Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif is expected to attend this meeting. However, there is no official statement in this regard whether PM Modi will hold a meeting with Xi Jinping and Pak PM Sharif. During the summit, the leaders are expected to review the organization’s activities over the past two decades and discuss the state and prospects of multilateral cooperation in the future, the statement said.

These countries are members
Let us tell you that this will be the first summit of the SCO since the year 2019, in which the leaders will have physical presence. In June 2019, the SCO conference was held in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. The Moscow summit in the year 2020 was held online due to the Kovid-19 pandemic, while the 2021 summit in Dushanbe was held in a “hybrid” manner. The SCO is headquartered in Beijing and includes China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, India and Pakistan.