SCO leaders’ meet starting today may see expansion push
NEW DELHI : The leaders’ summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) takes places on Tuesday under the chairmanship of India, with a likely push for inducting Iran and possibly Belarus as new members. Apart from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the virtual summit is set to be attended by President Xi Jinping of China, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif of Pakistan, President Vladimir Putin of Russia and the leaders of a number of Central Asian countries. The previous summit took place in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, in September last year.
The summit is likely to see a push for expanding the SCO, with Iran likely to join as a member. Besides this, the leaders are likely to push for Belarus to also join the grouping. “Bahrain, Kuwait, Myanmar, the Maldives and the UAE are about to join SCO-led cooperation efforts as new dialogue partners," according to a press statement from the Russian foreign ministry.
Besides this, counter-terrorism, anti-drug trafficking and anti-extremism will be the focus of te summit. The SCO establishes cooperation between members on a variety of functional issues like economic development, security and anti-terrorism. For example, in the field of security, the grouping has established institutions like the SCO Counter-Terrorism Centre, the SCO Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure (RATS), the SCO Information Security Centre and the SCO Centre against International Organized Crime to bring about regular cooperation between member countries.
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