Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari and Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai were among the guests at the June conference of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in Astana, Kazakhstan.
The SCO’s six regular members are China, Russia and four ex-Soviet states of Central Asia. Other Asian countries – especially India, Pakistan and Mongolia – are regularly invited as observers.
Presenting Pakistan’s case for full membership, Zardari said his country would take part in initiatives to promote regional and trans-regional trade. “We wish to cooperate in finance, banking sectors and joint ventures in energy, infrastructure, education, science and technology development,” he said. “Apart from our geographical location, geo-economic realities also encourage Pakistan to join SCO as a full member. Our destinies are inter-linked.”
Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev said that the organisation had to become a greater force after it had showed little capacity to react during last year’s uprising and ethnic violence in Kyrgyzstan, which is a member state. “We watched over two sharp political conflicts and a coup… and our organisation did not and could not make any decisions,” he observed.
