Tashkent, Uzbekistan, May 24
By Demir Azizov- Trend:
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) foreign ministers will put up an issue of signing a memorandum on granting membership to India and Pakistan for consideration by the leaders of the organization's member-states, Uzbek Foreign Minister Abdulaziz Kamilov said after a meeting of the SCO Council of Foreign Ministers May 24.
"A decision was made to submit for consideration of heads of SCO member-states an issue on signing at the upcoming summit in Tashkent a memorandum on commitments of India and Pakistan with the goal of acquisition by them a status of SCO member-states," Kamilov said.
The SCO summit will be held in Tashkent on June 23-24.
At the meeting, the SCO foreign ministers discussed the issues of increasing the role of the organization in international affairs and confirmed a joint stance ruling out a confrontational approach in solving global problems.
The participants welcomed the signing of a memorandum on granting a status of the SCO dialogue partner to Azerbaijan, Armenia, Cambodia and Nepal, Uzbekistan's foreign minister said.
He stressed that priority tasks of cooperation in the SCO will be to "carry out efforts on combating terrorism, separatism and extremism jointly and also countering illegal drug trafficking."
Foreign ministers of the SCO member states, the SCO Secretary General Rashid Alimov and the Director of the Executive Committee of the Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure of the SCO (RATS SCO) Eugene Sysoev were taking part in the meeting.
The SCO members are China, Kazakhstan, Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Afghanistan, Iran, Mongolia and Belarus are the SCO observer-countries, while Turkey, Azerbaijan, Sri Lanka, Armenia, Cambodia and Nepal are dialogue partners.