New Delhi: External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar will visit Uzbekistan on Thursday to participate in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Council of Foreign Ministers meeting. Jaishankar will be sharing the table with his Pakistani counterpart Bilawal Bhutto at the SCO Foreign Ministers meeting. This is the first time that Jaishankar and Bhutto will meet in person after the formation of the new coalition government in Pakistan — Pakistan Peoples Party(PPP) and Pakistan Muslim League - Nawaz (PML-N) — in Islamabad led by Shehbaz Sharif.
In an offical press release, the Ministry of External Affairs said that Jaishankar is participating in the event at the invitation of the Acting Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Uzbekistan, Vladimir Norov to take part in the meeting.
The discussion will review ongoing cooperation in the expansion of the SCO Organisation and exchange ideas on regional and global developments of common concern, the release stated.
This meeting holds significance as the Foreign Ministers will hold discussions and prepare for the upcoming meeting of the Council of Heads of State which is slated to be held on September 15-16, 2022 in Samarkand.
Meanwhile, a bilateral meeting between Jaishankar and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who will also attend the SCO meet, is expected to take place on the sidelines of the meeting. Jaishankar Wang Yi may review the outcome of the recently held 16th round of negotiations between the military commanders of India and China to resolve the stand-off along the LAC in Eastern Ladakh.
Uzbekistan is chairing the SCO meeting this year and will be the organizer of all the pertaining to the two-decade-old grouping that includes Russia, China, India, Pakistan, and 4 central Asian countries -- Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.
SCO has four observer states, namely Afghanistan, Belarus, Iran, and Mongolia and six dialogue partners, namely Azerbaijan, Armenia, Cambodia, Nepal, Turkey, and Sri Lanka.