NEW DELHI External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar on Monday said no meeting has been organised between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Pakistani counterpart Imran Khan on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit to be held later in June.
“No meeting is being organised between Prime Minister Modi and Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan. There is nothing more that I can add at this stage,” he told reporters here.
Modi will hold bilateral meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the SCO summit which will be held in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan on June 13-14, said Gitesh Sharma, Secretary (West) in the MEA.
Don’t Target Pak: China
China on Monday said Pakistan should not be targeted on terrorism at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit this week where Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to raise the issue of Islamabad harbouring terrorists.
During his first foreign visit to the Maldives after being re-elected as India’s Prime Minister, Modi on Saturday indirectly attacked Pakistan, saying state sponsorship of terrorism is the biggest threat the world is facing today.
Modi is likely to raise the issue at this week’s summit as part of India’s strategy to isolate Pakistan at multilateral forums but China made clear its ally, Islamabad, should not be targeted at the event.
“In every summit, the institutional building of the SCO will be discussed that would involve economic cooperation and security cooperation particularly on counter-terrorism,” China’s Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Hanhui said.
“Security and development are two major issues of focus for the SCO. The establishment of the SCO is not to target any certain country but the summit of this level will certainly pay attention to major international relation and regional issues,” Zhang said in an indirect reference to Pakistan while replying to a question if multilateralism would be the at the fulcrum of the discussion at the event.
Zhang was addressing a press conference ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping attending the 19th SCO summit in Kyrgyzstan’s Bishkek and the fifth version of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) in Dushanbe, the capital city of Tajikistan.
Modi will meet Xi on the sidelines of the summit where he will not meet Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, citing Islamabad funding anti-India terrorists.
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