Anjali Sharma
GG News Bureau
WASHINGTON/NEW YORK, 18th Sept. Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India on Friday held first face-to-face meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the aftermath of the Russia- Ukraine war which began on Feb 24 of this year.
President Putin has told India Prime Minister Modi that he is aware of India’s concerns over his country’s conflict with Ukraine, and wanted the war to end.
Both India and Russia had the bilateral meeting between Putin and Modi on the sidelines of the SCO Summit in Samarkand.
Putin was quoted on Friday as saying, “I know about your position on the conflict in Ukraine, and I know about your concerns. We want all of this to end as soon as possible. We will keep you abreast of what is happening there.”
Putin said this after Modi told him that “today’s time is not the time for war”.
Uzbekistan is the current chair of SCO 2022 and India will take over the next chairmanship of the SCO.
Uzbekistan’s President Shavkat Mirziyoyev welcomed Modi to the Congress Centre in Samarkand for the 22nd SCO Summit.
Putin congratulated India for assuming the presidency the following year.
Chinese President Xi Jinping also congratulated India for the SCO Presidency in 2023 during the meeting of the expanded circle of the Heads of SCO.
“I congratulate India for hosting the SCO next year,” Chinese President Xi Jinping said in a statement during the summit.
This was the first in-person SCO Summit after the Covid pandemic hit the world.
The last in-person SCO Heads of State Summit was held in Bishkek in June 2019.
The SCO group comprises 8 Member States (China, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan), four Observer States interested in acceding to full membership (Afghanistan, Belarus, Iran, and Mongolia) and six “Dialogue Partners” (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Turkey).
The Shanghai 5 was formed in 1996, became the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in 2001 with the inclusion of Uzbekistan.
India and Pakistan entered the group in 2017 and the decision to admit Tehran as a full member in 2021.
SCO became one of the largest multilateral organizations, accounted for 30 per cent of the global GDP and 40 per cent of the world’s population.
SCO has potential in various new sectors, wherein all the member-states could find converging interests.
India has pushed hard for cooperation in Startups and Innovation, Science and Technology and Traditional Medicine.
India made sincere efforts to encourage peace, prosperity, and stability of the whole Eurasian region in general and SCO member countries in particular since it became full member of the SCO group.
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