SCO summit vows to boost regional security, economic, cultural ties
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The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit, marking its 10th anniversary this year, ended here Wednesday with a communique pledging enhanced regional security, economic and cultural cooperation.
At the two-day summit, Chinese President Hu Jintao, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and other leaders of the SCO members reviewed the achievements of the grouping in the past decade, and charted a blueprint for the future.
The leaders pointed out that the SCO, weathering 10 years of major international and regional changes, had become an important mechanism in deepening good-neighborly partnership between member states, according to the communique.
The summit approved the 2011-2016 drug control strategy of the SCO member states and its implementation plan, which would be conducive to enhancing the capabilities of member states in jointly dealing with drug threats in the region, the communique said.
The member states reiterated they would continue to fight against all forms of terrorism, separatism and extremism as well as drug and weapon trafficking, other transnational crimes and illegal immigration, the communique said.
The summit also emphasized it was imperative SCO members jointly pushed the international community to form a common standard of behavior on international information security.
The leaders also expressed concern that continuous deterioration of the situation in Afghanistan remained one of the major threats to regional security and stability.
The SCO member states believed military means alone could not solve Afghanistan's problems and that attention must be first paid to its social and economic issues, including reconstruction of transportation and social infrastructure, the communique said.
The communique said the SCO supported its member states in working together with international institutions and other parties to take part in economic reconstruction programs in Afghanistan.
The leaders stressed the member states had played an active role in helping turmoil-hit Kyrgyzstan return to stability and provided a large amount of humanitarian and financial assistance.
On the economic front, the summit pointed out that economic activities at the ministerial level had been remarkably enhanced since the SCO Dushanbe summit in November last year.
The summit, therefore, proposed the industrialists committee and the inter-bank union adopt substantial common action, implement multilateral programs in order to promote the socioeconomic development of member states and increase financing cooperation efforts.
The member states also said cultural and people-to-people cooperation was of importance significance to boosting good-neighborly cooperation, and members would therefore pay high attention to cooperation in culture, environmental protection, science and technology, innovation, public health, tourism and sports.
Member states pledged to strengthen cooperation with observers and dialogue partners, whose potential would provide a huge driving force for further strengthening the SCO, it said.
Founded on June 15, 2001, the SCO groups China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Observer countries include Mongolia, Pakistan, Iran and India while Belarus and Sri Lanka are dialogue partners.
The next SCO summit will be held in 2012 in China, according to the communique.
China will become the president country of next year's SCO summit, according to the SCO Charter.
Leaders of the member states also announced 2011-2012 as the SCO's year of good-neighborliness and friendship.
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