 "External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi meet on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Brazil's Rio de Janeiro. File Image: X | @DrSJaishankar.")
External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar will visit Singapore and China from July 13 to 15, the Ministry of External Affairs announced on Saturday.
In Singapore, Jaishankar will meet his counterpart and other leaders as part of regular engagements between the two countries, the ministry said.
Afterward, he will travel to China to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Council of Foreign Ministers’ meeting, scheduled for July 15 in Tianjin. Jaishankar is also expected to hold bilateral talks on the sidelines of the meeting.
China’s Foreign Ministry confirmed that the SCO foreign ministers’ meeting will bring together foreign ministers from member states and leaders of the bloc’s permanent bodies to discuss cooperation and key international and regional issues. The meeting will help lay the groundwork for the SCO Leaders’ Summit, likely to be held in Tianjin in early September.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who invited the ministers, may also visit India later this month for talks with National Security Adviser Ajit Doval under the Special Representatives (SR) dialogue on the boundary dispute.
Wang and Doval are the designated Special Representatives for boundary talks between India and China. So far, 23 rounds of talks under this mechanism have been held without resolving the border issues.
This will be Jaishankar’s first visit to China since the military standoff along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh began in May 2020.
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View AllHis trip follows recent visits by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and NSA Doval to China in late June for SCO meetings. Singh attended the SCO Defence Ministers’ conference in Qingdao.