India To Chair Two-Day SCO Meeting, Regional Security On Agenda

The engagement with SCO has helped India foster relations with various countries, with shared cultural and civilizational linkages and is considered India's extended neighbourhood.

India has been announced as the Chair of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in 2023, and as part of its duties, India will be hosting the SCO Defence Ministers' Meeting in New Delhi on April 28. Established in 2001, the SCO is an intergovernmental organization, comprising Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and India. Along with the member states, Belarus and Iran, the two observer countries, will also attend the SCO Defence Ministers Meeting in New Delhi.

The Defence Ministers will discuss several matters related to regional peace and security, counterterrorism efforts within the SCO, and effective multilateralism at the meeting.

India's Chairmanship theme of SCO 2023 will be 'SECURE-SCO'. India values the SCO's promotion of multilateral, political, security, economic, and people-to-people interactions in the region. The ongoing engagement with SCO has helped India foster its relations with the countries in the region, with which India shares cultural and civilizational linkages and is considered India's extended neighbourhood.

SCO follows its policies based on the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity of nations, non-interference in internal affairs, equality of all member states, mutual understanding, and respecting the opinions of each member. Along the sidelines of the SCO Defence Ministers' Meet, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh will also hold bilateral meetings with his counterparts from the participating countries. Among them will be Chinese Defence Minister General Li Shangfu, who will be on a two-day visit to India at the time. 

Li, who has been sanctioned by the US for buying arms from Russia, was appointed as the Defence Minister by Beijing last month, succeeding Wei Fenghe. This is the first time a Chinese Defence Minister will be setting foot in India after the June 2020 Galwan clash between Indian and Chinese troops.

The visit is expected to mark a gradual drawing down of troops by both sides that are currently standing in an eyeball-to-eyeball situation at the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in the Eastern Ladakh sector, official sources told ABP Live.