EAM Jaishankar attends SCO foreign ministers' meet in Moscow

External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar today attended the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) foreign ministers' meeting, where key international and regional issues in the context of the 75th UN anniversary were discussed.

New Delhi: External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar on Thursday attended the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) foreign ministers' meeting in Russia's capital Moscow.

Jaishankar's Pakistani and Russian counterparts, Shah Mahmood Qureshi and Sergey Lavrov, were also present at the meeting.

The SCO currently comprises of eight member states including China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, India, and Pakistan. Both India and Pakistan joined the SCO in the year 2027 as member states.

"At the formal opening of the meeting in Moscow of the Foreign Ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation," Jaishankar tweeted along with a group photo of the foreign ministers of the SCO member states including China.

SCO provides a common platform for building mutual trust, enhancing cooperation, finding common ground between the member states. Russia hopes that both India and China will use SCO to address their issues, and encourages that both the countries resolve the LAC border row.

Jaishankar is also expected to meet his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi on the sidelines of the SCO meet amid the tensions between two countries along the border in Ladakh. Both India and China are members of the influential regional bloc that primarily focusses on security-related issues.

Jaishankar at the SCO meeting

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In fact, all eyes are on the outcome of the likely bilateral meeting between Jaishankar and Chinese FM Wang Yi. It is the third SCO foreign ministers' meeting that India attended as a full member of the eight-nation bloc.

The discussion at SCO meet laid the ground for the upcoming session of SCO Heads of State Council expected to be held later this year.

The foreign ministers at SCO discussed key international and regional issues in the context of the 75th UN anniversary. The deliberation is centred around a number of urgent foreign policy issues as well as decisions aimed at further developing SCO activities on overcoming the global political and socio-economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic.

India has been taking an active part in various SCO dialogue mechanisms. The SCO Summit will be held in the near future.

It is worth noting that SCO was founded at a summit in Shanghai in 2001 by the Presidents of Russia, China, Kyrgyz Republic, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

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