Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit Uzbekistan during September 15-16 to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit. This will be the first time that PM Modi will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping since the start of the border standoff in Ladakh.
Modi, who is traveling to Samarkand for the SCO meet at the invitation of Uzbekistan President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, is likely to hold a “few bilateral meetings on the sidelines of the summit”, the external affairs ministry said. People aware of the matter said the prime minister is expected to hold bilateral meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi and Mirziyoyev on the summit’s margins.
There has been considerable speculation about the possibility of a meeting in Samarkand between Modi and Xi, especially after India and China announced the withdrawal of their troops from patrolling point-15 or PP-15 at Hot Springs, one of the contention points in their standoff in the Ladakh sector of the Line of Actual Control (LAC). The withdrawal of the troops at PP-15 began on Thursday and is set to be completed by September 12. However, there is no official confirmation about a possible meeting between Modi and Xi.
The last time Modi and Xi were in the same room in person was at the Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa (BRICS) Summit in Brasilia in November 2019. The two leaders also had a bilateral meeting at that time. The military standoff has further strained the India-China ties, though the two leaders have joined several virtual meetings since it began in May 2020.
“During the summit, the leaders are expected to review the organization’s activities over the past two decades and discuss the state and prospects of multilateral cooperation in the future,” the external affairs ministry said.
