Uzbekistan President Shavkat Mirziyoyev welcomed Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday as the 22nd Summit of the Council of Heads of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Member States (SCO-CoHS) began in Samarkand.
At the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Summit in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Pakistani PM Shehbaz Sharif, Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, and other leaders also posed for a group portrait.
On its official Twitter account, the Prime Minister’s office posted images of Modi’s meeting with the leaders of other SCO members in Uzbekistan.
The security in the area has been stepped up in advance of the SCO State of Heads meeting, and air patrolling was in progress at the congress centre in Samarkand, Uzbekistan.
After two years of the COVID-19 epidemic, the summit officially began on Friday in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. To attend the SCO Summit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi landed in Samarkand on Thursday night.
The leaders are anticipated to assess the SCO’s activities and talk about potential areas of future cooperation during the summit. After the Samarkand Summit, India will take over the SCO’s rotating annual chairmanship, which is now held by Uzbekistan.
On the sidelines of the SCO summit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is anticipated to meet with the leaders of Russia and Uzbekistan, including Presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia and Shavkat Mirziyoyev of Uzbekistan.
This is the first SCO Summit to take place in person since the Covid pandemic hit the globe. In June 2019, the SCO Heads of State Summit took place for the final time in person in Bishkek.
Currently, the SCO consists of eight Member States (China, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan), four Observer States (Afghanistan, Belarus, Iran, and Mongolia) that are interested in obtaining full membership, and six “Dialogue Partners” (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Turkey).
The Shanghai Five, which was established in 1996, evolved into the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in 2001 when Uzbekistan was added. With the addition of India and Pakistan in 2017 and the choice to accept Tehran as a full member in 2021, the SCO grew to become one of the biggest multilateral organisations, representing close to 30% of the global GDP and 40% of the world’s population.
SCO offers promise in a number of fresh industries where all the member nations might discover shared interests. India has already made significant efforts to promote collaboration in traditional medicine, science and technology, and startups and innovation.
India has made serious efforts to promote the peace, prosperity, and stability of the entire Eurasian area in general and the SCO member countries in particular since the time of its full membership.
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