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S Jaishankar to visit China for SCO foreign ministers' meet in Tianjin
The Meeting of the Council of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the SCO will be held in Tianjin on July 15, a statement by a spokesperson of the Chinese Foreign Ministry here said on Saturday.
In addition to attending the SCO meeting, Jaishankar will also pay a visit to China, the spokesperson said, without specifying it.
At the invitation of the member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China and Foreign Minister Wang Yi, foreign ministers of other SCO member states and heads of the bloc's permanent bodies will attend the meeting, the statement said.
The ministers will exchange views on SCO cooperation in various fields and major international and regional issues, it said.
The SCO comprises 10 member states - China, Russia, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Belarus.
A host of issues between the two countries, including the current normalisation process between the two countries, China's stoppage of the key rare earth metals required to manufacture a host of products, including automobiles, are expected to figure in the talks.
Earlier, reports said that Jaishankar will visit Beijing on July 13 for talks with Wang.
Jaishankar's visit follows the recent visits of Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and National Security Advisor Ajit Doval to China.
It would be Jaishankar's first visit to China after the ties between the two countries came under severe strain following the 2020 military standoff along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh.
Wang may also visit India this month to hold a fresh round of talks with NSA Doval under the framework of Special Representatives (SR) dialogue on the boundary dispute, it is learnt.
Both Wang and Doval are the designated SRs of the boundary mechanism. Both countries held 23 rounds of talks under the SRs mechanism to resolve the vexed boundary dispute spanning 3,488 km, but without success.
Defence Minister Singh travelled to the Chinese port city of Qingdao last month to participate in the SCO defence ministers' conference.
China is the current chair of the SCO, and it is hosting the meetings of the grouping in that capacity.
During his talks with Chinese Defence Minister Gen Dong Jun on June 26, Singh proposed that India and China should solve the "complex issues" under a structured roadmap comprising steps to de-escalate tensions along the frontiers and rejuvenate the existing mechanism to demarcate the borders.
Singh and Dong held bilateral talks on the sidelines of a conclave of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) with a focus on maintaining peace and tranquillity along the Line of Actual Control (LAC).
Singh had also emphasised the need to create "good neighbourly conditions" to achieve the best mutual benefits and called for "taking action on the ground" to bridge the "trust deficit" resulting from the 2020 eastern Ladakh border standoff, according to an Indian readout on the meeting on June 27.
Reacting to Singh's statement, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning had said the boundary question is complicated, and it takes time to settle it.
The military standoff between China and India in eastern Ladakh began in May 2020, and a deadly clash at the Galwan Valley in June that year resulted in a severe strain in ties between the two neighbours.
The face-off effectively ended following completion of the disengagement process from the last two friction points of Demchok and Depsang under an agreement finalised on October 21.
China and India are currently in the process of normalising relations.
The decision to revive the SR mechanism and other such dialogue formats was taken at a meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Kazan, Russia, on October 23.
The Modi-Xi meeting came two days after India and China firmed up a disengagement pact for Depsang and Demchok.
In the last few months, India and China have initiated a number of measures to repair the bilateral ties.
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