External affairs minister S Jaishankar will lead the Indian delegation to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit in Kazakhstan next month. This comes following Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decision to skip the meeting.
The Indian side had earlier confirmed PM Modi’s visit to Astana for the SCO Summit on July 3-4 and an “advance security liaison” team had also visited Kazakhstan as part of the preparations for the visit.
“The Indian delegation at the SCO summit will be led by external affairs minister S Jaishankar,” external affairs ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said at his weekly media briefing.
The situation in Afghanistan, the Ukraine conflict and boosting overall security cooperation among the SCO member countries are expected to figure in the summit.
The SCO, comprising India, China, Russia, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, is an influential economic and security bloc that has emerged as one of the largest transregional international organisations.
Generally, the Indian prime minister participates in the SCO summit.
In a phone conversation on Tuesday, Prime Minister Modi conveyed to Kazakhstan President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev India’s full support for the success of the summit.
Kazakhstan is hosting the summit in its capacity as the current chair of the grouping.
India was the chair of the SCO last year. It hosted the SCO summit in the virtual format in July last year.
India’s association with the SCO began in 2005 as an observer country. It became a full member state of SCO at the Astana summit in 2017.
India has shown a 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.
The SCO was founded at a summit in Shanghai in 2001 by the presidents of Russia, China, the Kyrgyz Republic, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Pakistan became its permanent member along with India in 2017.
(With PTI Inputs)
