Astana SCO Summit to Elevate Cooperation to a New Level

This meeting ahead of the SCO summit in Astana on June 15 that will mark the tenth anniversary of the founding of the Organisation focused on issues of raising the role and authority of the SCO in the global and regional architecture.

In his opening speech, Kazakhstan’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Yerzhan Kazykhanov said the decision made ten years ago to found the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation became an important strategic choice of the member nations that were united by the will to strengthen neighbourliness and beneficial cooperation, preserve peace and stability in the SCO region.

Kazykhanov noted Kazakhstan over the year of its rotating chairmanship led by the Shanghai spirit of mutual trust, equality, respect for diversity of cultures, and aspiration for mutually beneficial development has put efforts to fortify unity of member nations and develop common approaches to key issues of SCO’s work. Kazakhstan has organized over 100 joint events aimed to promote interaction on specific spheres of cooperation, including the joint anti-terrorist military exercises, meetings of defense, interior affairs, health, and agriculture ministers. Under the leadership of Kazakhstan, the SCO continued to pursue joint work to counter terrorism, drug trafficking, illegal migration and ensure international information security. Addressing the issues of regional security, Kazykhanov stressed that the situation in Afghanistan demanded joint monitoring. In this respect, he suggested to set into practice a quarterly intelligence exchange among member states and regular meetings of security council secretaries with participation of Afghanistan. He also called for more active interaction with such international organisations as UN, OSCE, CIS, CTSO, ASEAN, CARICC, CICA and OIC. Speaking about economic cooperation, Kazakhstan’s top diplomat emphasised that implementation of specific projects that will produce tangible results should be set as SCO’s priority. He called for a closer coordination among member states and concerted actions in the agrarian sector to ensure food security in the SCO region. He went on to mention the importance of transport and transit cooperation that could result in promotion of road freightage on equal footing. Commenting on the issue of the SCO’s expansion, Kazykhanov remained confident that the process was fully objective but warned that it could take several years before the SCO embraced new members. In this vein, he reaffirmed Kazakhstan’s full support to Afghanistan’s request to join the SCO as an observer. Concluding his remarks, Kazakhstan’s Minister reiterated that Kazakhstan views interaction within the SCO as one of the main priorities of its foreign policy. Yang Jiechi, Chinese foreign minister, in his address to the council expressed his confidence that the summit in Astana would have a historic significance and be crowned with success. Reflecting on the ten years of the Organisation’s activities he said the SCO had worked and carried out a new concept of security on the principles of mutual trust, mutual benefits, equality and cooperation, and had laid the foundation for regional economic integration. He flagged some of the main issues that he believed the Organisation should attach more attention to, including stability facilitation in Kyrgyzstan, peaceful reconstruction of Afghanistan, prevention of spreading of alarming situation in the Middle East and North Africa onto the SCO region. Ruslan Kazakbayev, Kyrgyz foreign minister, extended his people’s gratitude to the SCO member states for the support and aid rendered to Kyrgyzstan in the turmoil period of 2010. He called for closer trade, economic and cultural ties in the SCO region. While lauding the joint work of the SCO member states in promoting security in the region, he remained concerned about security challenges and threats coming from Afghanistan. Foreign minister Sergei Lavrov of Russia termed the Organisation as an influential factor of global and regional politics and a full-fledged mechanism that allows implementation of common interests of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, China, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan and. He stressed the importance of using the SCO as a platform to promote regional cooperation on security, trade, and humanitarian cooperation. He welcome the forthcoming adoption of the SCO anti-drug strategy for 2011-2016 that would intensify cooperation in the joint fight against drug trafficking. The Astana Summit outcome document will exemplify the achievements of the organization over the past ten years and set new objectives for the years to come as well as outline the member nations’ common approaches to main issues of today’s world order, Lavrov added. The SCO ministers approved the draft of the model Memorandum of commitments of the country applying for the SCO membership to be adopted at the summit in Astana in June. They also welcomed the adoption of the UN resolution on Cooperation between the United Nations and the Shanghai Organisation. The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation is an intergovernmental international organization composed of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, China, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Formed initially as a confidence-building mechanism to resolve border disputes in 2001, it has risen in status through expanding its activities to include increased military cooperation, intelligence sharing, counterterrorism drills and through intensifying its focus on trade and economic cooperation. Mongolia received observer status in 2001, and India, Iran and Pakistan became observers the following year. Belarus and Sri Lanka were granted dialogue partner status in 2009. 3

The Organisation member states cover an area of over 30 million square kilometres, or about three fifth of Eurasia, with population of about 1.5 billion. Its working languages are Russian and Chinese.