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The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation is a mechanism for multilateral cooperation that plays an important role in maintaining regional peace and stability and in facilitating the prosperity and development of the Member States.
The SCO is a China-led eight-member economic and security bloc with India and Pakistan being admitted to the grouping in 2017.
It is in this backdrop that Modi’s visits to Maldives and Sri Lanka – his first official overseas destinations in his second term as Prime Minister – is expected to herald the second chapter for Modi’s Neighbourhood First policy. Its second edition is expected to mark a shift from India’s immediate to extended neighbourhood and from disputed land borders to maritime expanse making Modi an Indo-Pacific Prime Minister.
The MoU will be signed on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO)summit in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, later this week.
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Xi Jinping, along with other leaders of the group including Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is in the Kyrgyz capital to attend the two-day Summit beginning Thursday.
Photo: Twitter
On a visit to Japan last month, U.S. President Donald Trump welcomed Abe’s help in dealing with Iran, highlighting what he called the “very good relationship” between Tokyo and Tehran. As a U.S. ally that also has good diplomatic relations with Iran, Japan could be in a unique position to mediate between the Islamic Republic and the United States.
Photo: Courtesy Japan Times
Even without SAARC, India and Pakistan will have to engage with each other within the very framework of the SCO. So why not that bilateral meeting between South Asia’s midnight’s children to start afresh.
‘In Syria, with assistance from Russian Federation, this phenomenon of ISIL was demolished. We thought that after living in Syria these fighters will go to other countries, and we wanted to demolish there, not in Russia,”
The IS narrative in India appears to have gained a new meaning and importance after the Sri Lanka bombings which revealed complex networks through which the Islamic State tends to radicalize people and facilitates terror plots. Self-financed attacks carried out by a close-knit group of educated and computer savvy individuals without any criminal background are emerging as the newest set of perpetrators.
Photo: Agencies
Some 200 million girls and women are impacted by FGM worldwide, according to U.N. data, but some activists said this was a ‘massive underestimate’
Photo: UNICEF