India
is likely to attend the meeting of Council of Foreign Ministers (CFM) of
Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) for the third consecutive time, as a
full member. The two day-long meeting is scheduled to be held in Moscow on
September 9, 2020 to September 10, 2020.
India’s External Affairs Minister,
Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, will depart to attend the meeting today evening, the
MEA sources said. “This will be the third CFM meeting that India will be
attending as a full member of SCO. Earlier two meetings were held in Beijing
(China) on April 23-24, 2018 and Bishkek (Kyrgyz Republic) on May 21-22, 2019”,
the ministry of external affairs said in a statement. India has been taking an
active part in various SCO dialogue mechanisms under the Chairmanship of the
Russian Federation in this year. The SCO Summit will be held in the near
future, it said. The CFM meeting in Moscow will review the preparations for the
forthcoming SCO Summit and also exchange views on international and regional
issues.
Dr Jaishankar’s visit to Moscow will
include the participation in the Council of SCO Foreign Ministers and other
bilateral meetings. Last week, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh was in Moscow to
attend the joint meeting of defence ministers of the SCO, the Collective Security
Treaty Organization (CSTO) and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).
Singh had on September 5, 2020 held talks
in Moscow with his Chinese counterpart, Wei Fenghe, and discussed the border
standoff in eastern Ladakh. Returning from Russia, Mr Singh made a stopover in
Tehran for talks with his Iranian counterpart Amir Hatami on September 7, 2020.