Nawaz, Modi likely to meet in Russia

ISLAMABAD: The prime ministers of Pakistan and India are leaving on visits of different countries on Monday (tomorrow) and both will be together in the Russian city Ufa on Thursday (July 9) to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and nations of emerging economies BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) and both the leaders are likely to have a meeting there.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif will stay abroad for five days in this trip and for ten days next week with an interval of two days as he would visit Saudi Arabia. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will stay away from New Delhi for nine consecutive days as he has planned to visit five Muslim Central Asian states in the sojourn including Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan.
Prime Minister Nawaz will be in Norway on Sunday where he will address an international conference on education.
He will undertake a one-day bilateral visit to the host country on Tuesday before flying to the Russian city of Ufa where Pakistan and India are likely to become member countries (currently, both nations have observer status) of the SCO.
Nawaz Sharif and Narendra Modi will have an opportunity to meet there. Both have kept in touch with each other regularly in recent months. Both the prime ministers will attend SCO and BRICS.
Pakistan has been invited for the BRICS as an observer for the first time since the inception of the organisation. Prime Minister Nawaz will be having meetings with Chinese President Xi, Iranian President Dr Hasan Rouhani, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and Russian President Putin separately on the brinks of the summit.
The diplomatic observers are of the view that such meetings would be a source of socialization of the world leaders where they avail themselves of opportunity of shaking hands, hugging and sitting together since such meetings are viewed as ‘haphazard’ interaction where nothing concrete could be sorted out as they take place without full preparatory work.