New Delhi, Aug. 6: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to visit China for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit, being held on August 31 to September 1.

This will be Modi’s first visit to Beijing since 2019 and the Galwan clashes in 2020. He most recently met President Xi Jinping, in October 2024 at the sidelines of the BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia.

After the crucial meeting in Kazan of the two leaders, India and China had announced plans to disengage troops in Depsang and Demchok, the two fashpoints in Ladakh where the Indian and Chinese armies clashed since 2020.

Earlier in July on his first visit to China since the start of the military standoff between Chinese and Indian troops along the Line of Actual Control in eastern Ladakh in 2020, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar met President Jinping in Beijing and apprised him of the “recent development” in bilateral ties, the two countries have begun taking steps to repair relations.

Jaishnakar visit came after Defence Minister Rajnath Singh’s June visit to China, which holds the rotating SCO presidency this year.

While Singh refused to sign a draft statement that did not mention the Pahalgam terror attack, Jaishankar also used the platform to speak about terrorism. He said the SCO was founded in 2001 to combat the “three evils” of “terrorism, separatism and extremism”, and that the grouping needed to take an “uncompromising position on this challenge”.-Agencies