The Chinese defence minister General Li Shangfu will be in Delhi for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) meeting next week, amid the continuing three-year-old military confrontation in eastern Ladakh.
Sergei Shoigu, the Russian defence minister, will also be present at the SCO summit on April 27 and 28. India is becoming more concerned about the increasing strategic ties between Moscow and Beijing as well as the effects of the current conflict in Ukraine. Khawaja Asif, the Pakistani defence minister, would nevertheless take part remotely in the meeting.
Sources said defence minister Rajnath Singh is “likely” to hold bilateral meetings with both General Li and Shoigu on April 27, while the main day for the SCO meet will be on April 28.
Since the People's Liberation Army launched several incursions into eastern Ladakh in April and May 2020, which caused bilateral relations to deteriorate, this will be the first visit by a Chinese defence minister to India.
China has so far refused to undertake troop disengagement at the crucial faceoffs at the strategically-located Depsang Plains as well as the Charding Ninglung Nallah (CNN) track junction at Demchok in eastern Ladakh. Beijing has also upped the ante along the Sikkim-Arunachal Pradesh frontier, which resulted in the clash between the rival troops at Yangtse in the crucial Tawang sector on December 9. Earlier this month, it also “standardised” the names of 11 places in Arunachal Pradesh, which was summarily rejected by India.