Swaraj to attend SCO meeting in Tajikistan today

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj will be participating in the two-day 17th Council of Heads of Government (CHG) meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation in Dushanbe, Tajikistan starting from Thursday.

This will be the second CHG meeting since India became a full member of SCO in June last year. Swaraj had also attended the last year's meeting at Sochi.

Swaraj's programme in Dushanbe will include participation in the SCO CHG meeting, both in the restricted as well as extended formats. The meeting is a forum that enables India to engage with SCO member countries and Observer states of Afghanistan, Belarus, Iran and Mongolia. It is the first major meeting since Kyrgyzstan took over as chair of the organisation.

The leaders will be discussing prospects for the further development of SCO and will exchange in-depth views on current international and regional issues.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had led the official delegation to the SCO summit in Qingdao, China in June. India has participated in a number of meetings of the organisation, with over 12 ministerial-level meetings since joining SCO last year.