SCO Summit: PM Modi meets Afghanistan President Ghani

Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit here on Thursday.

This is Modi's third meeting of the day with SCO leaders after he held engagements with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier.

Modi is on a two-day visit to Kyrgyzstan for attending the SCO Summit. This is his first visit to a multilateral forum after being re-elected for a second term.

During his meeting with Xi, the Prime Minister told the Chinese President that Pakistan needs to create an atmosphere free from terror and take concrete action to end the scourge but does not see Islamabad doing it at this stage.

To mark the establishment of 70 years of diplomatic relations, India and China will hold 35 programmes each, Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale said.

Modi and Jinping will have an informal summit in India later this year on the lines of the informal parleys in Wuhan last year.

However, Gokhale said the date and venue of the summit are yet to be decided while media reports in India had earlier said it would be in Modi's home state Gujarat.

India, Russia and China will hold a trilateral meeting on the sidelines of the G-20 Summit in Osaka in Japan later this month.

This was disclosed after a meeting between Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the SCO Summit here.

Gokhale also said that Modi will visit Russia in early September as the main guest at the Eastern Economic Forum to which he was formally invited by Putin.

However, there was no meeting between Modi and his Pakistani counterpart Imran Khan during the informal dinner hosted by Kyrgyzstan President Sooronbay Jeenbekov for the SCO leaders here, sources said on Thursday.

According to sources, Khan and Modi did not even exchange pleasantries during the dinner hosted on the sidelines of the two-day summit.

This comes despite the Pakistan Prime Minister writing a letter to Modi recently, saying Islamabad wants dialogue with New Delhi to resolve all outstanding issues between the two countries.

Moreover, Modi's chartered plane did not take the Pakistani air space for flying to Bishkek and instead flew via the circuitous route through Oman and Iran.

Tensions between India and Pakistan have spiralled following the deadly February 14 Pulwama terror attack. New Delhi has remained rooted in its stand, saying that terror and talks with Islamabad cannot go together.