Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin will discuss India-Russia cooperation within the United Nations (UN) and G20 during the upcoming Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Uzbekistan this week.
The SCO summit is scheduled to take place in Samarkand, a city on the ancient Silk Road, on September 15 and September 16.
“A conversation on the international agenda with Modi will also take place, the sides will discuss issues of strategic stability, the situation in the Asia Pacific Region, and, of course, cooperation within major multilateral formats, such as the UN, the G20 and the SCO,” said President Putin’s aide Yuri Ushakov, as per news agency TASS.
The Russian official further said, “This is particularly important, because India will preside in the UN Security Council in December, and, in 2023, India will lead the SCO and will also chair the G20.”
As per media reports, Prime Minister Modi is also expected to hold a bilateral meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping during the two-day summit.
The bilateral meetings will be held at a time when India and China have completed disengagement of troops along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Ladakh and when New Delhi and Moscow are in talks to finalise the Rupee-Ruble payment system.
It will be the first meeting of PM Modi with the Chinese President after they met at Brasília on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in 2019.
However, the schedule for PM Modi’s meeting with world leaders will be finalised in due course. “Some bilateral meetings will take place on the sidelines of the SCO but the programme of the meetings will be finalised in due course,” Indian Ambassador to Uzbekistan Manish Prabhat.
He said that economic cooperation in the SCO is an important question and will be discussed among the member states during the meeting.
The issue of promoting connectivity will figure prominently during PM Modi’s meetings with leaders of Central Asian countries, the ambassador said.