External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar will visit Uzbekistan on July 28-29 to attend the meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). The meeting will discuss preparations for the upcoming meeting of the SCO Council of Heads of State in Samarkand on September 15-16, the Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday.The foreign ministers will review ongoing cooperation on expanding the SCO and exchange ideas on regional and global development of common interest, the ministry said.
Jaishankar, who is visiting at the invitation of acting Foreign Minister of Uzbekistan Vladimir Norov, is likely to meet his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi on the sidelines of the SCO meeting. If the meeting goes ahead, it will be the second time this month that Jaishankar and Wang have held talks on the sidelines of a multilateral event. However, there is little optimism in Delhi for any breakthrough or move forward in the two-year-old military standoff on the Line of Actual Control (LAC), given the positions taken by both sides.
Jaishankar and Wang held talks on the sidelines of the G20 foreign ministers’ meeting in Indonesia on July 7. Neither side has made any official announcement about the meeting in Tashkent, although people familiar with the matter said it was a bilateral meeting between the two sides ministers are not excluded. Pakistani Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari will also attend the SCO meeting. There was no word about a possible meeting between the Indian and Pakistani foreign ministers.
Defense Minister Rajnath Singh is expected to attend the SCO defense ministers’ meeting in Uzbekistan next month and raise the possibility of a bilateral meeting with his Chinese counterpart Wei Fenghe.In his last meeting with Wang on July 7, Jaishankar called for “early resolution” of all outstanding issues along the LAC and reiterated the need to complete troop withdrawal at all friction points to restore peace and tranquility in the border areas. So far, both sides have withdrawn front-line troops from two points of friction – Lake Pangong and Gogra.
A report issued by China’s foreign ministry after the July 7 meeting made no mention of the LAC standoff at all and quoted Wang as saying that the two sides had managed and controlled their differences and bilateral relations were witnessing a “momentum of recovery”. Last week, Foreign Ministry spokesman Arindam Bagchi dismissed the Chinese side’s mention of “momentum of recovery” and stressed the need to focus on decommissioning, de-escalation and peace and tranquility in the border areas to normalize bilateral relations.
