SCO summit priorities and challenges, expert comments

- The Shanghai Cooperation Organization is known to have been established in June 2001 and united six permanent members, such as Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The Organization was created following the so-called ?Shanghai Five of these countries which regulated the boundary issues with China, except for Uzbekistan. In 2001 Uzbekistan joined the group. At the SCO summit in Astana in 2005 it was decided to grant the observer status to three countries more. Later at the Dushanbe summit it was decided to set up a commission that will elaborate the terms and conditions of accepting new members. A new stage ? ?dialogue partner? ? will be introduced, thus making a three-stage model of ?dialogue partner?, ?observer country?, and ?SCO participant?. The Yekaterinburg summit is supposed to determine two more countries ? Byelorussia and Sri-Lanka ? as ?dialogue partners?. They are two absolutely different and interesting countries. President Lukashenko has been showing interest in joining the SCO for several years. Sri-Lanka seems to have started achieving internal consensus. - Will the situation in Afghanistan discussed in Yekaterinburg? - Afghanistan has really been a supplier of terrorism and drugs for many years now. It is reported that 96% of the world drugs production falls on Afghanistan. Therefore the regional security problem in the SCO area is the number one issue. Recently in Moscow an international conference on Afghanistan problems was held under the SCO auspices, where the ways of fight against drugs traffic from this country was discussed. The most interesting fact is that representatives of Iran and the USA met at this conference. March 31 a sminilar conference was held in Hague. Apparently the world community is concerned about the risks and challenges which Afghanistan bring. How do you assess economic integration on the SCO space? - The economic integration within the SCI is a very important constituent. A lot of multipartite documents and projects have been adopted in this direction, for instance the SCO Business Council. Creation of an Energy Club has been discussed for a long time. However these projects are still on the discussion level. All agreements between the SCO member countries are being carried through bilaterally, for there are a lot of preconditions for that. Therefore the economic cooperation relates to ?the prospective? directions of the SCO. What is the role of Kazakhstan in the activity of the Organization? - First of all, the foreign policy of Kazakhstan mainly due to President Nursultan Nazarbayev, has acquired a real multiple-vector nature. Astana keeps to smooth stable relations both with the western countries and with the neighbors Russia and China. In this regard participation in the SCO allows your country to both build equal relations with Moscow and Beijing, and position itself as a ?third pole? of influence in the region. - Thank you for the interview.