EAM Jaishankar Will Attend The SCO Summit In Uzbekistan

The SCO council of foreign ministers will meet in Uzbekistan on July 28 and 29, and the SCO’s external affairs minister, S. Jaishankar, will attend.

The upcoming meeting of the SCO council of heads of state, scheduled for September 15–16 in Samarkand, will be covered at the meeting, the external affairs ministry announced on Wednesday.

According to the ministry, the foreign ministers would discuss ongoing SCO organisation expansion cooperation and discuss regional and global trends of shared interest.

On the sidelines of the SCO summit, Jaishankar, who is in the country at Vladimir Norov’s invitation as acting foreign minister of Uzbekistan, is scheduled to see Wang Yi. If the meeting goes forward, Jaishankar and Wang will speak to one another outside of a multilateral gathering for the second time this month.

However, given the postures taken by both sides, there is little hope in New Delhi for a resolution or progress in the two-year military impasse on the Line of Actual Control (LAC).

On July 7, Jaishankar and Wang had a conversation outside of a G20 conference of foreign ministers in Indonesia. A meeting between the two ministries isn’t being ruled out, according to persons acquainted with the situation, despite neither side having made an official announcement about it.

Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, the foreign minister of Pakistan, will also be present at the SCO gathering. Regarding a potential meeting between the foreign ministers of Pakistan and India, nothing was known.
Arindam Bagchi, a spokesperson for the external affairs ministry, had dismissed the Chinese side’s mention of a “momentum of recovery” last week and emphasised the need to concentrate on troop disengagement, de-escalation, and peace and tranquilly in the border regions in order to normalise bilateral relations.

Next month’s SCO defence ministers meeting in Uzbekistan is anticipated to include Chinese Defense Minister Wei Fenghe, opening the door to a potential bilateral meeting.

Jaishankar highlighted the necessity for full troop disengagement at all flashpoints at his final meeting with Wang on July 7 and urged a “early resolution” of all concerns along the LAC in order to restore peace and tranquilly to the border regions. Two areas of contention—Pangong Lake and Gogra—have seen the withdrawal of frontline soldiers by the two sides thus far.

No mention of the LAC dispute was included in a readout released by China’s foreign ministry following the July 7 meeting, which paraphrased Wang as saying that the two sides had handled and controlled their disagreements and that there was a “momentum of recovery” in bilateral relations.