SCO Summit: PM Modi is also likely to hold a few bilateral meetings on the sidelines of the summit.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be in Uzbekistan on September 15 and 16 to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit. Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russia's Vladimir Putin will also attend.
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The SCO summit comes at a time of widening rift and tensions over the Russia-Ukraine war and India's border disputes with China. The leaders are expected to review the grouping's activities over the past two decades and discuss the prospects of multilateral cooperation.
Prime Minister Modi is also likely to hold a few bilateral meetings on the sidelines of the summit, which will be held in the Uzbek city of Samarkand, a stop on the ancient Silk Road.
It will be the first time PM Modi and Xi Jinping will come face to face after their meeting at Brasília on the sidelines of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) in 2019.
Russia has said Xi Jinping will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the summit, as Moscow seeks to bolster ties with Beijing after being slapped with unprecedented Western sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine.
The Beijing-headquartered SCO is made up of China, Russia, India, Pakistan, as well as four central Asian countries -- Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. It is the world's largest regional organisation, covering approximately 60% of the area of Eurasia, 40% of the world population, and more than 30% of global GDP.
China's President Xi Jinping will make state visits to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan this week -- his first trip abroad since the early days of the Coronavirus pandemic.
After the Samarkand summit, where Iran was expected to formally be admitted into the SCO, India will take over the Presidency of the influential grouping of Central Asian Republics.
The first in-person SCO summit since 2019 will be watched closely for the possibility of bilateral meetings on the sidelines with Chinese President Xi, Russian President Putin, and Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif among the leaders expected to attend.
Xi Jinping is readying for a pivotal twice-a-decade Congress of the ruling Communist Party in October, where he is widely expected to secure an unprecedented third term as president, according to news agency AFP.
Previous Chinese leaders generally refrained from making overseas trips in the weeks before the Party Congress, when behind-the-scenes power struggles frequently intensified.
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