Indian foreign minister meets Chinese counterpart while hosting Shanghai Cooperation Organisation
The coastal Indian state of Goa, popular for its pristine beaches and dazzling nightlife, turned into a diplomatic hotspot on Thursday as foreign ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation began a series of meetings there on the sidelines of the two-day SCO summit.
The SCO is an eight-nation Eurasian security bloc aimed at counterbalancing Western influence in the region. China and Russia, along with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, were founding members in 2001; India and Pakistan joined in 2017.
The Goa talks are intended to promote multilateralism, regional security and person-to-person interactions among the delegations.
Do you have questions about the biggest topics and trends from around the world? Get the answers with SCMP Knowledge, our new platform of curated content with explainers, FAQs, analyses and infographics brought to you by our award-winning team.
For example, India, the organisation's 2023 chair, and China remain locked in a tense border dispute in the Himalayas. On Thursday, Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang sat down with his Indian counterpart Subrahmanyam Jaishankar.
"Focus remains on resolving outstanding issues and ensuring peace and tranquillity in the border areas," Jaishankar said in a Twitter post, adding that he and Qin had engaged in a "detailed discussion" about the India-China relationship.
The Chinese foreign ministry has not yet issued a statement on the meeting.
This was the second session between the two ministers in the last two months; Qin visited India in March for a Group of 20 summit. During that meeting, Jaishankar described India-China relations as "abnormal".
Last week, the two nations' defence ministers met in New Delhi on the margins of an SCO conclave. Indian defence minister Rajnath Singh told his Chinese counterpart Li Shangfu that deployment of a large number of Chinese troops and the "violation of existing agreements has eroded the entire basis of bilateral relations".
Li said that the situation was "generally stable".
At least 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers were killed in a dispute in the region in 2020, and some 17 rounds of Sino-India diplomatic and military-level talks have been held in the past two years to ease the border situation.
With Sino-India ties in limbo, China has deepened its engagements with Russia, another SCO member - especially since the latter invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
On Thursday, Qin also met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, and discussed implementing agreements Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin reached in Moscow in March.
A statement from the Russian foreign ministry said that the two ministers "highly appreciated the dynamics of the development of Russian-Chinese relations against the backdrop of growing geopolitical instability".
As China-Russia ties assume greater significance - and Beijing gains more leverage over Moscow - India has pivoted toward the US to counter China's growing influence in the region.
India also remains a leading buyer of Russian oil despite Western sanctions and has refused to condemn Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine.
After meeting Lavrov on Thursday, Jaishankar said in a Twitter post that they had conducted a "comprehensive review" of "bilateral, global and multilateral cooperation".
Lavrov described the meeting as a "truth-based exchange of views", saying that the "ministers praised the dynamics of cooperation in key areas of special and privileged strategic partnership".
Lavrov also held talks with Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, the foreign minister of Pakistan, India's arch-rival and China's ally. While India and Pakistan did not hold a meeting on Thursday, the summit drew the first visit to India by a Pakistani foreign minister in 12 years.
Hina Rabbani Khar, the last top Pakistani diplomat to visit India in 2012, refused to call it an "India visit".
"This is an SCO visit," she stressed in an interview last week. "We are not looking at it in a bilateral context."
The official inauguration of the ministers' meeting will be held on Friday; member states will discuss regional security issues, including consideration of full-time membership for observer nations Iran and Belarus.
This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
Copyright (c) 2023. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
