SCO Summit 2018: Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Pakistan President Mamnoon Hussain Shake Hands

Earlier in the day, he attended restricted session of the Summit

New Delhi, June 10: Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Pakistani President Mamnoon Hussain shook hands after signing of agreements between Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) nations in the coastal city of Qingdao. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is in China to attend a two-day SCO summit in the coastal city of Qingdao.

Earlier in the day, PM Modi attended the restricted session of the SCO Summit as part of India’s first participation in the summit as a full-time member of the organisation.

In the session, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that connectivity with the neighbourhood and in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) region is India’s priority. He also stressed that his country was committed to extend full cooperation to a successful outcome of the Summit.

#WATCH Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Pakistani President Mamnoon Hussain shake hands after signing of agreements between #SCO nations, in China’s #Qingdao pic.twitter.com/bpGu7evVdC

— ANI (@ANI) June 10, 2018

Meanwhile, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s has accepted Prime Minister Narendra Modi‘s invite to visit India in 2019, as the two leaders met on the sidelines of Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit. The two leaders, who met a second time in just over a month after their informal summit in Wuhan, had a “substantive” meeting in which they took stock of the developments in the Sino-Indian ties after their ice-breaking meeting in late April.

Notably, it is for the first time the Indian prime minister is attending the SCO Summit after India along with Pakistan became full-fledged members of the grouping, which has been increasingly seen as a counter to NATO. The SCO was founded at a summit in Shanghai in 2001 by the presidents of Russia, China, Kyrgyz Republic, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. The SCO has eight member countries which represent around 42% of the world’s population and 20% of the global GDP.

Besides Modi, other leaders attending the summit include Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Pakistan President Mamnoon Hussain.