Roving Periscope: PM Modi to host Putin, Xi, and others virtually in SCO Summit on Tuesday
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Ten days after the Wagner Group’s short-lived mutiny in Russia, its President Vladimir Putin will appear at the Summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) hosted virtually by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday.
Besides President Putin, his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, among others, will also join the Summit, which is expected to focus on the regional security situation and ways to boost connectivity and trade.
It will be President Putin’s first participation in a multilateral Summit after the private mercenary company launched a brief armed rebellion that rocked Moscow recently.
The SCO’s Summit with India in the chair is also set to welcome Iran as a new permanent member of the bloc. India assumed the rotating presidency of the SCO at the Samarkand Summit of SCO on September 16, 2022.
Among the issues expected to figure in the Summit are the situation in Afghanistan, the Ukraine conflict, boosting connectivity and trade, and enhancing cooperation among the SCO member countries, the media reported on Monday.
The Summit is taking place against the backdrop of the over three-year-long military standoff in the Eastern Ladakh Sector of the Line of Actual Control (LAC) between India and China, and soon after PM Modi’s highly-successful State Visits to the US and Egypt in May.
The SCO, comprising India, China, Russia, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, is an influential economic and security bloc and has emerged as one of the largest transregional international organizations.
The heads of the two SCO bodies—the Secretariat and the SCO RATS (Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure) are also set to attend Tuesday’s virtual summit whose theme is “Towards a SECURE SCO.”
PM Modi coined the SECURE acronym at the 2018 SCO Summit and it stands for Security; Economy and Trade; Connectivity; Unity; Respect for Sovereignty and Territorial Integrity; and Environment.
The heads of six international and regional organizations have also been invited to the Summit. These are the United Nations (UN), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)), Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), and the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA).
India’s presidency of the SCO saw significant activities in a number of areas. New Delhi created five new pillars for cooperation in SCO: startups and innovation, traditional medicine, digital inclusion, youth empowerment, and shared Buddhist heritage.
The special working group on startups and innovation and the experts working group on traditional medicine were created on India’s initiative.
To further Prime Minister Modi’s vision of Vasudhaiv Kutumbakam (The World Is One Family), India emphasized building greater people-to-people connections, officials said.
Several signature events were held under the Indian presidency to deepen people-to-people connections.
India’s association with the SCO began in 2005 as an observer country. It became a full member state of SCO at the Astana Summit in 2017. New Delhi has shown a keen interest in deepening its security-related cooperation with the SCO and its RATS, which specifically deals with issues relating to security and defense.
The SCO was founded at a Summit in Shanghai in 2001 by the Presidents of Russia, China, the Kyrgyz Republic, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Pakistan became its permanent member along with India in 2017.
