‘Iran next to join emerging power SCO’
-
Leaders of SCO countries and observer states pose for a group photo on the sidelines of their summit in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, Sept. 11, 2014.
Iran is next to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) which will officially have India and Pakistan on its roster next week, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev has said.
Leaders of the regional security group, led by China and Russia, will meet for the summit of their leaders in Uzbekistan’s capital of Tashkent on June 23 and 24.
“We will meet up next time at the SCO forum at which we will include India and Pakistan into the organization,” Russia’s Interfax news agency on Saturday quoted Nazarbayev as saying.
“Iran is the next. So, this organization with three billion residents is becoming a huge power," he added.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping will attend the summit as will Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
There is optimism that the entry of India and Pakistan into the grouping will have sobering effect on the two nuclear arch-rivals’ ties.
“Besides adding 1.5 billion people under the SCO umbrella, the India-Pakistan admission may also help improve strained ties between India and Pakistan by opening another communication channel,” Xia Yishan, a research fellow of Central Asian studies at the China Institute of International Studies, said.
SS
