New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday left on an eight-day tour to five Central Asian countries and Russia to attend the BRICS and SCO summits. Modi will first stop at Uzbekistan.
Furthermore, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif will meet on the sidelines of the SCO Summit in Russia on July 10. This would be the first formal meeting between the leaders of both the South Asian countries after May 2014, when PM Modi had invited leaders of all SAARC nations to attend his swearing-in ceremony.
PM Modi on Monday embarked on a six-nation visit and will be in Russia to attend SCO as well as the BRICS summit. Modi and Sharif had last met in November at the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit where they did not hold any bilateral meeting.
Prime Minister Modi had called Sharif at the beginning of the holy month of Ramzan and extended his best wishes while stressing the need for having peaceful ties. During his telephonic conversation, Modi had also conveyed to his Pakistani counterpart India’s decision to release detained Pakistani fishermen on the occasion of Ramzan.
The call was seen by many as an attempt to reach out to Pakistan after leaders from both sides exchanged sharp comments after Modi’s critical remarks about Pakistan during his Bangladesh visit and in the wake of India’s military action in Myanmar.
He will be visiting Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan from July 6-8 after which he will attend the BRICS and SCO summits from July 8-10. He will visit Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan from July 10-13. Boosting trade, energy, connectivity and counter-terrorism, besides people-to-people links will be high on the agenda in all five countries.
“It was in Tashkent that we lost one of our most popular and respected leaders, Lal Bahadur Shastri ji, who ignited our nation with the clarion call of ‘Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan’. I will be paying my tributes to this proud son of India during the visit,” Modi said.
The Summit of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), the important economies across the world, will focus on discussions on enhancing cooperation in economic field, including the possibility of trade in local currency.
During the visit to five Central Asian nations, the first by an Indian Prime Minister to all of them together, the focus will be on enhancing trade, which is “not impressive”, and cooperation in energy and security, the Ministry of External Affairs had said last week.
Bureau Report
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