All eyes are on the two-day meeting of Foreign Ministers of SCO member nations to begin in Goa on May 4.
External Affairs Minister Dr S Jaishankar is set to hold important bilateral parleys with his Chinese and Russian counterparts, sources say.
Foreign Ministers of member countries, including Pakistan, are expected to be present at the meeting.
Dr S Jaishankar has arrived in Goa to take part in the meeting and host the important diplomatic event of the year.
The Foreign Ministers’ meeting will give India and other member countries a platform to discuss multilateral cooperation and important issues.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) is an eight-member multilateral organisation established on June 15, 2001 in Shanghai. Member States of SCO are India, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
In a related and important development, National Security Advisor, Ajit Doval, paid a one-day visit to Iran-capital Tehran, on May 1, at the invitation of his Iranian counterpart Ali Shamkhani.
This was crucial as it came days before Iran’s formal entry into the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). The NSA also held talks with Iran’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hossein Amirabdollahian, who will attend the much talked about SCO foreign ministers’ meeting in Goa.
Ajit Doval had also called on Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi. During the meeting, President Ebrahim Raisi said, “Iran and India, as two influential countries in the region, can be more effective in the changes caused by the establishment of the new world order by promoting their cooperation to a new level.”
Pakistan Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari will be leading the Pakistan delegation to the SCO Council of Foreign Ministers. Bilawal Zardari’s visit to India is the first visit by any Pakistani Foreign Minister since Hina Rabbani Khar made a trip in 2011 during the erstwhile UPA regime.
After the Pulwama terror attack in 2019, India and Pakistan had nearly come “close” to a nuclear war, former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed in his memoir.
In February 2019, India launched aerial strikes in Pakistani territory Balakot destroying the terror camps.
Three other observer States besides Iran are interested in acceding to full SCO membership – Afghanistan, Belarus and Mongolia. There are also six “Dialogue Partners” – Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Turkiye.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), as of now, represents around 42 per cent of the world’s total population and 25 per cent of the global GDP.
Last week during the SCO Defence Ministers’ conference, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh met his Iranian counterpart Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Gharaei Ashtiyani and discussed matters of mutual interest. Rajnath Singh also made a candid talk and insisted that all attempts should be made to isolate nations that encourage terrorism. He also did plain speaking with regard to issues with China.
“If we want to make the SCO a stronger and more credible international organisation, our top-most priority should be to effectively deal with terrorism,” Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said, adding, “If a nation shelters terrorists, it not only poses a threat to others, but for itself too”.
The full SCO membership in the pattern given to India and Pakistan in 2017 would henceforth give Iran the key opportunity to take a major step in regional cooperation, analysts say.
It is also expected that the SCO can provide Iran with a multilateral institutional capacity to strengthen trade and connectivity to revive the economy against crippling US sanctions.
At the end of the deliberations of Defence Ministers last week in Delhi, all the SCO member countries signed a protocol, expressing their collective will to make the region secure, peaceful and prosperous.
Addressing the media after the meeting, Indian Defence Secretary Giridhar Aramane said all the member nations arrived at a consensus on several areas of cooperation, including dealing with terrorism, security of vulnerable populations in various countries as well as Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief.
