President Xi Jinping will head to Central Asia's Kyrgyzstan on Monday for a two-day summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). He will be joined by around a dozen other heads of states, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, Indian leader Narendra Modi, among others.

The SCO is the world's largest regional organization in geographic scope and population, and accounts for nearly a quarter of the global GDP.

Xi and Putin will meet on the sidelines of ⁠the August 31-September 1 in the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek, Kremlin foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov said on Friday.

Ushakov said the leaders would discuss the ⁠planned 2,600-kilometre Power of ⁠Siberia 2 system, which is ⁠expected to carry 50 billion cubic metres of ⁠gas per year to China through Mongolia from Arctic gasfields.

Around a dozen heads of states will also be in Bishkek to mark 25 years of the SCO, which brings together China, Russia, India, Pakistan, Iran, four Central Asian countries and Belarus.

The latest summit takes place four-and-a-half years into the Russian-Ukraine conflict and six months into the war between Washington and Tehran. Iran will be represented by its president, Masoud Pezeshkian.

Xi, Putin, Pezeshkian as well as Modi and Pakistan's Shehbaz Sharif are due to take part in a plenary session chaired by Kyrgyz leader Sadyr Japarov.

Putin is also expected to hold bilateral talks with Pezeshkian, Ushakov said, which will come days after CIA director John Ratcliffe made a rare trip to Moscow to discuss, what US media have speculated, the Ukraine and Iran conflicts.

The SCO has historically focused on economic issues.

On top of its 10 members, it now has 15 "dialogue partners", including Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. It also has two observer countries: Afghanistan and Mongolia. (AFP & Reuters)




Edited by Azam Khan