To attend the upcoming BRIC Summit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi left for Johannesberg, South Africa on Tuesday. Amid the speculation around BRICS expansion and China’s efforts to push the bloc into a geopolitical rival of G7, there are chances that PM Modi and XI Jinping will meet each other during the summit.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to hold a bilateral meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sideline of the BRICS summit. Giving a hint of the meeting, PM Modi, on Tuesday, said that he looks forward to holding bilateral meetings with “some of the leaders present in Johannesburg”.
Shedding light upon PM Modi’s schedule in Johannesberg during the BRICS summit, Foreign Secretary Vinay Kwatra in a special briefing, said that the schedule for bilateral meetings with leader is still being developed.
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Vinay Kwatra also gave details about PM’s trip and the delegation that will be accompanying him to South Africa. He said that for the 15th BRICS Summit, the business delegation will accompany PM modi to attend the Business Tracks meetings and also the meetings of the BRICS Business Council, BRICS Women Business Alliance and the BRICS Business Forum.
In case Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Xi Jinping hold bilateral talks in the sidelines of the summit, it would be the first one snce the India-China standoff began on May 2020. Both of them met briefly in November last year, during a dinner hosted by Indonesian President Jojo Widodo in Bali.
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It is worth noting, that this will be the first in-person BRICS Summit after three consecutive years of virtual interaction due to COVID. During the visit to South Africa, PM Modi is also scheduled to take part in a special event “BRICS – Africa Outreach and BRICS Plus Dialogue” being organized after the BRICS Summit. Unlike a large number of national leaders, Russian President Vladimir Putin chose to join the 15th BRICS Summit virutally. The Russian delegation will be led by foreign minister Sergey Lavrov. He will also participate in a special event with the theme “Brics – Africa outreach and Brics plus dialogue”.
After the conclusion of BRICS summit in johannesburg, PM Modi will travel to Greece for his official visit on 25th August at the invitation of PM of Greece.
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Updated: 22 Aug 2023, 10:56 AM IST
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