Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, who is on a three-day visit to Tashkent, Uzbekistan from August 23 to 25 to attend the Annual Meeting of the Defence Ministers’ of Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Member States, will address the SCO meet of Defence Ministers at 11.30 (IST) today, reported news agency ANI.
Chinese Defence Minister General Wei Fenghe and Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu are likely to participate in the SCO meeting.
Earlier on Tuesday, Singh held bilateral meetings with his counterparts Col Gen Ruslan Zhakslykov from Kazakh and Lieutenant General Viktor Khrenin from Belarus and discussed defence and security cooperation as well as other issues of mutual interest.
After the meeting, the Defence Minister took to his twitter handle and wrote, “Had a wonderful meeting with the Defence Minister of Kazakhstan, Col Gen Ruslan Zhakslykov today in Tashkent. We discussed the entire gamut of the ongoing defence and security cooperation & other issues of mutual interest. We agreed to further deepen the defence cooperation.”
The SCO meet is a precursor to the SCO Summit scheduled for next month, which is likely to be attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
If the Chinese president travels to Uzbekistan, this would be the first in-person meeting between Modi and Xi, following the standoff along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Ladakh.
The summit is scheduled to be held in Samarkand from September 15-16.
The SCO, seen as a counterweight to NATO, is an eight-member economic and security bloc and has emerged as one of the largest trans regional international organisations. India became its permanent member in 2017 along with Pakistan.
The SCO was founded at a summit in Shanghai in 2001 by the presidents of Russia, China, the Kyrgyz Republic, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
India has shown keen interest in deepening its security-related cooperation with the SCO and its Regional Anti-Terrorism Structure (RATS), which specifically deals with issues relating to security and defence.
(With inputs from ANI and PTI)