The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) serves as an effective mechanism to combat terrorism, Russian president's special representative told Xinhua in a recent interview ahead of a SCO summit in Russia's Yekaterinburg.

The SCO has played a "positive and important" role in cracking down on terrorism, said Anatoly Safonov, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev's special representative for international cooperation on the fight against terrorism and cross-border organized crime.

"In fact, a regional anti-terrorism agency was launched in Tashkent following the SCO's establishment," he said, noting great achievements have been made in the SCO's cooperation in combating the three evil forces, namely terrorism, extremism and separatism, with the support from the leaders of the SCO member states.

Such cooperation includes one to two large-scale joint anti-terror military exercises annually, information exchanges and personnel training, said the representative, who is a veteran security official.

Safonov noted the cooperation among the security departments of the SCO members has been conducted "in a very concrete way."

"We created an anti-terrorism database, which enables us to share information about terrorist organizations, individual terrorists, as well as their action plans," he said.

Russia and China face similar problems in this regard, he said, listed such examples as terrorist activities in the North Caucasus region and the drug trafficking emanating from Afghanistan that undermines Russia's security, and China has threats from such terrorist organizations as the so-called East Turkistan Movement.

"We focus our attention to all security threats regardless of their distances from us, otherwise, we will lose our homes," he said, noting the SCO carries out its anti-terror cooperation in such a spirit.

The Russian official said the international community has acknowledged the SCO's key role in improving regional security, and the upcoming SCO summit will also discuss the bloc's anti-terror cooperation.

The SCO, a regional organization founded in 2001 in Shanghai, groups China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

It also has four observers, namely, Mongolia, India, Pakistan and Iran.

Chinese President Hu Jintao will attend the SCO annual summit scheduled for June 15 in Russia.

(Xinhua News Agency June 13, 2009)