A regular meeting of the prime ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) countries is to be held in the Kazakh capital in November, Ambassador-at-large and Kazakhstan's National Coordinator for the SCO, Ali Yerlik, announced this.
"Kazakhstan is the initiator of one of the important bodies of the SCO - the Council of Heads of Government, which decides the fundamental issues of development of cooperation in practical areas, especially in the economic sphere. It is symbolic that in the anniversary year of the organization the next meeting of the prime ministers of the member states is to be held in November 2021 in Nur-Sultan," the Kazinform agency quotes the ambassador on Tuesday.
According to the national coordinator, the country highly appreciates the role of the SCO in strengthening international security and regional cooperation. "Together with other members of the organization, our country strives to constantly make its worthy contribution to strengthening and fully realizing its powerful potential," he said.
Yerlik also recalled that since the creation of the SCO, Kazakhstan has put forward many different initiatives, projects, documents and programs within its framework. "In particular, such significant initiatives as the signing of the Agreement on Cooperation and Interaction of SCO Member States on Border Issues, the adoption of the SCO Development Strategy until 2025, the SCO Program in Combating Terrorism, Separatism and Extremism, the SCO Food Security Program, the 2019-2020 anti-drug operation "Web" and others were implemented at the proposal of the Kazakh side," the ambassador explained.
"For Kazakhstan, the main priorities of SCO membership are to help strengthen regional security, develop economic cooperation, unlock and realize the transit and transport potential of our region, and deepen humanitarian ties between member states," Yerlik said.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization is an international structure founded by the leaders of Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The declaration on the establishment of the SCO was signed at a meeting of the heads of six states in Shanghai on June 15, 2001. On June 9, 2017, the leaders of the SCO member states signed the decision to admit India and Pakistan to the organization. The current observer countries in the organization are Afghanistan, Belarus, Iran, and Mongolia; the partner countries are Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Nepal, Turkey, and Sri Lanka.
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Photo: Host Photo Agency sco-russia2020.ru
Based on materials from TASS