Modi-Xi talk speculations reach crescendo as PM arrives for SCO summit

The SCO is holding its first in-person summit in Samarkand in Uzbekistan after two years

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday travelled to Samarkand in Uzbekistan to attend the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), amid continued speculation over the possibility of a bilateral meeting between him and President Xi Jinping on the sideline of the conclave.

Modi’s tentative schedule in Samarkand does not yet include any bilateral meeting with the Chinese President. He will, however, hold bilateral meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and the host of the summit, Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, on Friday. The meeting with Iranian President is going to be the Prime Minister’s last engagement before his departure from New Delhi, according to the latest information received in New Delhi.

The sources, however, have not yet ruled out the possibility of a brief pull-aside between Modi and Xi during the summit or of a bilateral meeting with the Chinese President being included in the schedule of the Prime Minister later.

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“I will hold bilateral meetings with some of the other leaders attending the summit,” the Prime Minister said in a statement issued just before his departure from New Delhi. He, however, did not specify whom he would meet on the sideline of the SCO conclave. “Apart from the summit, the Prime minister will hold bilateral meetings with the President of Uzbekistan and some other leaders on the sideline of the summit,” Foreign Secretary, Vinay Mohan Kwatra, said, while briefing media-persons in New Delhi. He too declined to confirm if a meeting between Modi and Xi would take place in Uzbekistan.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Chinese government also did not reveal if the communist country’s President would meet the Prime Minister of India on the sideline of the SCO summit.

The officials of the two governments, however, continued back-channel talks and discussed the possibility of the leaders meeting each other, a source in New Delhi told DH.

If Modi and Xi meet each other in Uzbekistan, it will be the first bilateral engagement between the two leaders after the military stand-off along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh started in April-May 2020 that took the relations between the two nations to a new low.

The recent disengagement of troops in Gogra-Hotsprings (Patrolling Point 15) area on the LAC did end an impasse in the protracted negotiations to resolve the stand-off.

But New Delhi conveyed to Beijing that similar disengagement or mutual withdrawal of troops by the Indian Army and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) from other face-off points on the LAC must take place and peace and tranquillity must return to India-China border areas for restoration of normalcy in bilateral relations.

If the Prime Minister and the Chinese President meet each other on Friday, New Delhi would like to see the discussion resulting in two sides drawing a roadmap towards resolving the “remaining issues” along the LAC and then for mutual withdrawal of additional troops amassed in depth areas on both side of the disputed boundary between the two neighbouring nations, the source told DH.

“At the SCO summit, I look forward to exchanging views on topical, regional and international issues, the expansion of SCO and on further deepening of multifaceted and mutually beneficial cooperation within the organisation,” the Prime Minister said in his statement before leaving for Samarkand.