External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Tuesday was welcomed by China's foreign minister Wang Yi at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) ministerial meeting to be held shortly at a conference room here.

Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman also landed in Beijing earlier on Tuesday to attend preparatory meetings with the External Affairs Minister on the sidelines of the SCO meeting.

Sitharaman will be present alongside Swaraj to represent India at the annual summit of SCO in which India and Pakistan became full-time members in 2017. On a related note, the Ministry of External Affairs had earlier confirmed that there would be no bilateral meeting between Sushma Swaraj, Nirmala Sitharaman, and their Pakistani counterparts on the sidelines of the SCO.

On Monday Swaraj met China's President Xi Jinping along with the foreign ministers of various other countries who had come to attend the SCO summit. Swaraj is further scheduled to depart for Mongolia after the culmination of the SCO meeting. The annual SCO summit is scheduled to be held in June 2018 at Qingdao. The SCO includes India, Pakistan, China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan.

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