The second day of the summit of the Council of Heads of State of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization member states, where a number of decisions on the expansion of the association will be taken, will be held on Friday in Samarkand.
In addition to the SCO leaders themselves, the presidents of the three observer states - Belarus, Iran and Mongolia - as well as the heads of Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Turkey have arrived to attend the summit. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan was also expected to arrive, but Wednesday night it became known that he had cancelled his trip due to the worsening situation on the Armenia-Azerbaijan border.
The main day of the SCO summit will include negotiations in the narrow and extended format, as well as bilateral talks between the leaders. Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected to detail his vision of the challenges facing the union and propose a number of measures to improve its activities. He will also hold bilateral talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Azerbaijani leader Ilham Aliyev.
The first day of the summit was devoted to separate meetings of the heads of states and a joint tree-planting ceremony at the new Silk Road tourist complex.
Summit agenda
According to Yuri Ushakov, aide to the Russian president, the heads of the SCO member states will sign a memorandum on Iran's obligations on joining the association. Afterwards, Iran will fulfill its obligations and complete the official accession procedure. Also, during the summit the process of registration of Belarus as member in the SCO will start, and memorandums of dialogue partnership with Egypt, Qatar and Saudi Arabia will be signed. The decision to start the procedure of granting the status of dialogue partners to Bahrain, Kuwait, Maldives, Myanmar and the United Arab Emirates will be made in Samarkand.
It is expected that during the summit the leaders will discuss global economic recovery, stabilization of production and trade chains, climate change, food and energy security and other challenges. The heads of state will also discuss issues of reforming the organization.
In addition, Uzbekistan, as the current presiding country, put forward many proposals on the agenda of the summit in politics, security, economy, transport and communications, humanitarian cooperation and other areas.
As reported earlier by the press secretary of Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev Sherzod Asadov, the heads of state will sign more than 30 documents, including an agreement on good neighborliness, friendship and cooperation between member states of the SCO for 2023-2027. In addition, memorandums of understanding will be signed between the SCO and the Arab League, as well as specialized UN organizations - ESCAP and UNESCO. The main document of the summit will be the Samarkand Declaration.
Organization of the summit
The SCO summit and meetings of the heads of states are held in the congress center on the territory of the tourist cluster built for the event, where several hotels and other modern infrastructure have been built. On the first day of the summit, Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev and Chinese President Xi Jinping held talks and other meetings there.
In connection with the large-scale event, unprecedented security measures were introduced in Samarkand. In particular, railway transportation is restricted to the city. As a Samarkand railway station employee told TASS, the station only accepts transit passenger trains that mainly transport people who take part in the organization and coverage of the summit.
Traffic on the roads of the city is also severely restricted: for example, the entrance to the city is completely closed to non-resident vehicles, and some districts and streets of Samarkand are completely closed. The authorities decided to postpone the start of the academic year in all educational institutions of the city to late September.
The meeting of the SCO heads of states and honorary guests, as well as other events within the framework of the summit are covered by about 900 foreign and local journalists, as Asadzhon Khojaev, Head of the Information and Mass Communications Agency under the Presidential Administration of Uzbekistan told TASS. There are three press centers for journalists in Samarkand: one in the city center and two at the International tourist center where the main events of the summit take place. While the entrance to the press center in the center of Samarkand is free, to enter the other press centers one has to go through a multistep check by special services.
Cooperation within the SCO
The SCO is an international organization founded in 2001. The organization currently includes Russia, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, China, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. The observer states are Afghanistan, Belarus, Iran and Mongolia, the dialogue partners are Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Nepal, Turkey and Sri Lanka. At the SCO summit in Dushanbe in September 2021 the procedure for Iran's admission to the organization and granting the status of a dialogue partner to Egypt, Qatar and Saudi Arabia was initiated. This year, Belarus officially applied to join the SCO as a full member.
GSV "Russia - Islamic world"
Photo: Andrey Kudryashov/Fergana News Agency/Creative Commons 4.0
Based on materials from TASS