New Delhi: Pakistan defence minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif is likely to skip the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Defence Ministers’ meeting to be hosted by India this week in the national capital here, ThePrint has learnt.
However, in attendance will be Chinese defence minister Gen Li Shangfu and his Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu. The two ministers will attend the meeting along with other SCO member countries scheduled for April 27 and 28.
The SCO member countries are India, Russia, China, Kyrgyz Republic, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Pakistan.
Sources in the defence and security establishment told ThePrint that the Pakistani defence minister is unlikely to join the meeting in person even though their foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari will attend the Foreign Ministers’ meeting early May in Goa.
The sources said that the Pakistani defence minister could join in through video conferencing even though a formal invite was sent out to him like rest of the SCO ministers.
India got the chairmanship of the SCO last year at the Samarkand summit in Uzbekistan, and is hosting key ministerial meetings in the run up to the summit in July.
Talks with Chinese & Russian defence ministers
The visit by Gen Li, who took over in March, is the first by a Chinese defence minister since the tensions that broke out at the Line of Actual Control (LAC) between the two countries in eastern Ladakh.
Last month, the Chinese foreign minister had visited India for the G20 meeting and also held talks with external affairs minister S. Jaishankar.
The Chinese defence minister is a key person in the Chinese military set up and has overlooked several key projects and is the first from its Strategic Support Force (SSF) to be part of the country’s Central Military Commission — a body headed by President Xi Jinping and which oversees the People’s Liberation Army, the People’s Armed Police, and the Militia of China.
The SSF was created in 2015 as part of plans to restructure military management to focus on space, cyber, political and electronic warfare.
Defence minister Rajnath Singh will also have a bilateral meeting with Gen Li during which the vexed issue of the LAC tensions will come up for discussion, sources told ThePrint.
While both militaries have disengaged from the northern and southern banks of the Pangong Tso, Gogra and the Hot Springs area since the stand-off began in May 2020, tensions remain in Depsang Plains and Demchok.
Both sides have failed to make any headway with regard to Depsang and Demchok, where tensions predate the ongoing stand-off. Also, though troops have disengaged at several locations along the LAC, they continue to remain deployed in forward areas, along with their armoured and artillery equipment.
India has sought for de-escalation, which would entail the return of all additional troops and equipment in forward areas to their pre-April 2020 positions.
Singh will also hold bilateral talks with Russian defence minister Shoigu. This will be his first visit to India since the start of the Russia-Ukraine conflict last year.
However, India and Russia have continued to maintain high profile visits and interactions including the recent visit of Russian deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov for the 24th India-Russia Inter-governmental Commission on Trade, Economic, Scientific, Technological and Cultural Cooperation (IRIGC-TEC).
The defence cooperation between the two countries has also advanced from a simple buyer-seller relationship to a more comprehensive collaboration, including joint research, development, production, and marketing of advanced defence technologies and systems.
Russia continues to remain a key defence partner for India with the latter operating several of legacy Russian equipment while also going in for the purchase of new ones like the S-400 Triumf air defence systems.
(Edited by Anumeha Saxena)
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