The statement said the ministers will exchange views on SCO cooperation in various fields and major international and regional issues.
Photo : PTI
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar will be travelling to China’s Tianjin city for the foreign ministers’ meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). The Meeting of the Council of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the SCO will be held in Tianjin on July 15, read a statement by a spokesperson of the Chinese Foreign Ministry here said on Saturday.
Jaishankar will also be visiting China, the spokesperson said, without specifying it. According to the statement, at the invitation of the member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China and Foreign Minister Wang Yi, foreign ministers of other SCO member states and heads of the bloc’s permanent bodies will attend the meeting, reported PTI.
The statement said the ministers will exchange views on SCO cooperation in various fields and major international and regional issues.
The SCO grouping comprises 10 member states – China, Russia, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Belarus.
Agenda Of SCO Foreign Ministers’ Meet
Notably, it would be Jaishankar’s first visit to China after the ties between the two countries came under severe strain following the 2020 military standoff along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh.
Earlier, reports said that the EAM will visit Beijing on July 13 for talks with Wang. The foreign minister’s visit will be a month after Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and National Security Advisor Ajit Doval visited China.
Defence Minister Singh travelled to the Chinese port city of Qingdao last month to participate in the SCO defence ministers’ conference.
China is the current chair of the SCO, and it is hosting the meetings of the grouping in that capacity.
During his talks with Chinese Defence Minister Gen Dong Jun on June 26, Singh proposed that India and China should solve the “complex issues” under a structured roadmap comprising steps to de-escalate tensions along the frontiers and rejuvenate the existing mechanism to demarcate the borders.
Singh and Dong held bilateral talks on the sidelines of a conclave of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) with a focus on maintaining peace and tranquillity along the Line of Actual Control (LAC).
The military standoff between China and India in eastern Ladakh began in May 2020, and a deadly clash at the Galwan Valley in June that year led to severe tensions between the two neighbours.