SCO Foreign Ministers' meeting to kick off in Goa today; all you must know

The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Foreign Ministers' meeting is all set to kick off in Goa today. The meeting is scheduled to end on Friday, March 5. External affairs minister S Jaishankar will hold a bilateral meeting with Chinese foreign minister Qin Gang, Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov and the foreign minister of Uzbekistan in Goa.

Pakistan's foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto will also attend the meeting but it is unclear if he and Jaishankar would conduct a bilateral meeting or not.

Pakistan Foreign Office spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch during a weekly presser on Thursday stated that Bhutto-Zardari is attending the SCO Foreign Ministers' meeting at the invitation of Jaishankar.

Bilawal will be the first foreign minister to visit India after a gap of nearly 12 years. In 2011, then Pakistan foreign minister Hina Rabbani Khar visited India.

This is the second time that both Chinese and Russian ministers are in India this year. They were in New Delhi in March for the G20 Foreign Ministers' meeting.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson had earlier said, "At the meeting, State Councillor and Foreign Minister Qin Gang will exchange views with other SCO member states' foreign ministers on the international and regional situation and SCO cooperation in various fields, among other topics, to make full preparation for this year's SCO summit."

The meeting between Jaishankar and his Chinese counterpart is important in the backdrop of the deteriorating relations between the two countries after the Galwan Valley clash. India and China have held several rounds of military and diplomatic talks for disengagement along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh following the actions of the Chinese Army which led to a standoff in May 2020.

India took over the rotating presidency of the SCO at the Samarkand SCO Summit in 2022.

What is SCO?

The SCO is an intergovernmental organisation founded in Shanghai on June 15, 2001. The SCO comprises eight member countries (China, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan), four Observer nations interested in acceding to full membership (Afghanistan, Belarus, Iran, and Mongolia) and six "Dialogue Partners" (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Turkey).

According to the website of the United Nations (UN), "In 2021, the decision was made to start the accession process of Iran to the SCO as a full member, and Egypt, Qatar, as well as Saudi Arabia, became dialogue partners."

The SCO has been an observer in the UN General Assembly since 2005.

(With agency inputs)