Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will attend a regional summit next week that Moscow says will see one-on-one talks between Russian Presidents Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, the Indian government announced on Sunday (September 11th).
The meeting of member states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which aims to counterbalance Western influence and which includes, in addition to China, Russia and India, four Central Asian countries (Kazakhstan , Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan) and Pakistan, is due to take place in Samarkand, in southeastern Uzbekistan, on September 15-16.
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On Wednesday, Russia's ambassador to Beijing said Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping would meet at the summit.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry did not immediately confirm this, with a spokesperson saying during a regular press briefing that there was “
no information to provide
” on this subject .
.
Xi Jinping has not left his country since a state visit to Burma in January 2020, at the very start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
In its statement, the Indian government did not specify whether Narendra Modi would have bilateral talks with Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping or, for the first time since he became Pakistan's prime minister in April, with Shehbaz Sharif.