Beijing/New Delhi, Aug 13 (IANS) Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is set to visit India on August 18 for talks under the Special Representative mechanism, reports indicated on Wednesday.

The visit is scheduled to take place shortly before Prime Minister Narendra Modi travels to China to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit scheduled to take place at Tianjin later this month.

On August 8, China stated that it welcomes PM Modi’s participation in the SCO Summit.

At a briefing on Friday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said: “China welcomes Prime Minister Modi to China for the SCO Tianjin Summit. We believe that with the concerted effort of all parties, the Tianjin summit will be a gathering of solidarity, friendship and fruitful results, and the SCO will enter a new stage of high-quality development featuring greater solidarity, coordination, dynamism and productiveness.”

“China will host the SCO Summit in Tianjin from August 31 to September 1 this year. Leaders of over 20 countries, including all member states of the SCO and heads of 10 international organisations, will attend relevant events. The SCO Tianjin Summit will be the largest summit in scale since the establishment of the SCO,” he added.

PM Modi is set to travel to China to attend the SCO Summit to be held in Tianjin from August 31-September 1. This will be his first visit to China since the Galwan clash in 2020, which severely strained bilateral ties.

The breakthrough in bilateral talks, first after the Galwan Valley face-off between the soldiers of the two countries at the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in June 2020, was made possible after India and China reached an agreement on patrolling along the nearly 3500-km LAC to end the four-year-long border confrontation.

In July, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar visited China to attend the Meeting of the Council of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs in Tianjin. He also held discussions with his Chinese counterpart on the sidelines of the meeting. He also called on Chinese President Xi Jinping, along with his fellow SCO Foreign Ministers.

Earlier in June, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh visited China to attend the SCO Defence Ministers Meeting. India had refused to endorse the joint declaration at the SCO Defence Ministers’ meeting, citing the exclusion of concerns around terrorism as a key reason.

India stated that it wanted concerns about terrorism reflected in the document, which was not acceptable to one particular country; therefore, the statement was not adopted. During his visit, Singh met his Chinese counterpart, Admiral Don Jun, and the two leaders had a “constructive and forward-looking exchange of views” on issues related to bilateral ties.

In June, National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval also visited China to attend the 20th Meeting of the SCO Security Council Secretaries. In his intervention at the meeting, he highlighted the need to shun double standards in the fight against terrorism and take decisive actions against UN-proscribed terrorists and entities like LeT, JeM and their proxies and dismantle their terror eco-systems.

–IANS

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