Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi to meet China's Xi Jinping at regional summit

Chinese President Xi Jinping will meet his Iranian counterpart Ebrahim Raisi on Friday for their first face-to-face discussion.

The meeting will take place on the sidelines of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO) summit in former Soviet state Uzbekistan.

Mr Xi will meet Mr Raisi in the Uzbek city of Samarkand, Chinese broadcaster CCTV said. The Chinese leader will also meet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the sidelines of the meeting, the outlet said.

China is one of the key members of the multilateral dialogue — alongside France, Germany, Britain, Russia and the US — that is trying to revive Iran's troubled 2015 nuclear deal.

Iran, one of the SCO's four observer states, applied for full membership in 2008 but its bid was affected by UN and US sanctions imposed over its nuclear programme.

Mr Raisi said on Wednesday that Iran still intends to pursue membership of the SCO. However, several members do not want a country under international sanctions in their ranks.

Meanwhile, Mr Xi told Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday the two countries could “inject stability” into the world as the pair held their first face-to-face talks since Russia invaded Ukraine.

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