Baku is interested in raising the status of a dialogue partner within the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) to an observer. This was stated by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev at a meeting with the heads of the Russian media at the TASS Editors-in-Chief Club held the day before.
"As far as the SCO is concerned, we are already involved in a certain sense. We have been a dialogue partner for more than a year. This is the first stage. The second step is observers. And we officially applied to the SCO secretariat several years ago in order to upgrade our status to observer, but unfortunately, this issue has not been resolved yet," he said.
According to the Azerbaijani president, during his contacts with the leadership of the SCO member states, including Russia, it was said that there was no reason not to change the status. "But this is still not happening for unknown reasons," he added.
GSV "Russia - Islamic World"
Photo: Creative Commons
Based on materials from TASS