Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has arrived in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, where he will attend the annual meeting of the Council of Heads of State (CHS) of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

The prime minister is in the Central Asian state to participate in the SCO-CHS on the invitation of Uzbekistan President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, who would chair the meeting.

Upon his arrival at Samarkand airport, he was warmly greeted by officials and presented a guard of honour.

Later, the premier visited the Hazrat Khizr Mosque that dates back to the eight century. The grand mufti of Uzbekistan Sheikh Nooruddin greeted the premier at the mosque.

“The grand mufti tells me that he had a good interaction with PM because of his Arabic speaking skills,” tweeted journalist Anas Mallick while sharing a video of the meeting.

Leaders of SCO members and observer states as well as heads of SCO organizations and other special guests would attend the meeting.

At the forthcoming event, the SCO leaders will deliberate on important global and regional issues, including climate change, food security energy security, and sustainable supply chains.

They would also approve agreements and documents that would chart the future direction of cooperation among SCO member states.

Besides attending the summit, the prime minister would hold bilateral meetings with other participating leaders on the sidelines of the Council of Heads of State meeting.

Since becoming full member of SCO in 2017, Pakistan has been actively contributing towards advancing organization’s core objectives through its participation in various SCO mechanisms.

Putin-Xi meeting

Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping gather with other Asian leaders in the ancient Silk Road city of Samarkand on Thursday, for a regional summit touted as a challenge to Western global influence.

Xi and Putin will be joined by the leaders of India, Pakistan, Turkey, Iran and several other countries for the meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in the Uzbek city on Thursday and Friday.

The main summit day will be Friday, but it is a meeting of the Russian and Chinese leaders on Thursday that will be the most closely watched.

For Putin, the summit is a chance to show that Russia cannot be isolated internationally, at a time when Moscow’s forces are facing major battlefield setbacks in Ukraine.

For Xi on his first trip abroad since the early days of the coronavirus pandemic – it is an opportunity to shore up his credentials as a global statesman ahead of a pivotal congress of the ruling Communist Party in October.

And for both leaders, the summit will be a chance to thumb their noses at the West, especially the United States, which has led the charge in imposing sanctions on Russia over Ukraine and angered Beijing with recent shows of support for Taiwan.

“The SCO offers a real alternative to Western-centric organisations,” Kremlin foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov told reporters in Moscow this week.

“All members of the SCO stand for a just world order,” he said, describing the summit as taking place “against the background of large-scale geopolitical changes”.