New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday attended the annual summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in Samarkand, sharing the dais with Chinese President Xi Jinping for the first time since the deadly Galwan Valley clash in June 2020 between the Indian and Chinese army troops.
Apart from Xi, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and leaders of the other member states of the influential grouping are also taking part in the summit. Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and leaders of several Central Asian countries also took part in the event.
Modi was given a warm welcome and greeted by Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev at the venue of the summit. The Prime Minister is scheduled to hold separate bilateral meetings with Russian President Putin, Uzbek President Mirziyoyev and Iranian President Raisi. He arrived in Samarkand on Thursday night.
"At the SCO Summit, I look forward to exchanging views on topical, regional and international issues, the expansion of SCO and further deepening of multifaceted and mutually beneficial cooperation within the Organisation," Modi said ahead of the summit. "Under the Uzbek chairship, a number of decisions for mutual cooperation are likely to be adopted in areas of trade, economy, culture and tourism," he added.
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This is the first in-person SCO Summit after the Covid pandemic hit the world. The last in-person SCO Heads of State Summit was held in Bishkek in June 2019. The SCO currently comprises eight Member States (China, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan), four Observer States interested in acceding to full membership (Afghanistan, Belarus, Iran, and Mongolia) and six "Dialogue Partners" (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Turkey).
The Shanghai Five, formed in 1996, became the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in 2001 with the inclusion of Uzbekistan. With India and Pakistan entering the grouping in 2017 and the decision to admit Tehran as a full member in 2021, SCO became one of the largest multilateral organisations, accounting for nearly 30 per cent of the global GDP and 40 per cent of the world's population.
SCO has potential in various new sectors, wherein all the member-states could find converging interests. India has already pushed hard for cooperation in Startups and Innovation, Science and Technology and Traditional Medicine.
India, from the time of its full membership, made sincere efforts to encourage peace, prosperity, and stability of the whole Eurasian region in general and SCO member countries in particular. (with Agency inputs)
