SCO offers a new mode for international relations, with its membership doubled in the past 15 years: Alimov

On the occasion of the fifteenth Anniversary of the founding of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the secretary general of the SCO, Rashid Alimov, visited People.cn today and talked online with netizens on bbs.people.cn. 

He pointed out that during the past 15 years, the SCO has doubled its membership, from the original 6 members into 18 members at current. Regionally, the organization includes members ranging from Eastern Europe to the Persian Gulf as well as from Central Asia to South Asia; in regards of population, it represents the involvement of nations with a total number of people higher than 3 billion.

Answering a question regarding Pakistan and India applying for membership with the SCO, Rashid Alimov believes that there are many countries expressing their wish to enter the SCO one after another. One of the reasons for this is, the SCO is a new mode for the international relations system and provides a more balanced, equal and effective development approach.

Rashid Alimov, Secretary-general of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization

He pointed out, being the strong countries in the South Asian region, Pakistan and India possess long histories and glorious cultural traditions; other than this, these two countries have also been observing member countries of the SCO for over ten years and they are the first batch applying for membership with the SCO.

He emphasized, due to the fact that entering the SCO requires signature of over 30 kinds of official documents, plus other several procedures, as it stands, the SCO together with Pakistan and India will continue making efforts towards in this direction in order to realize membership.

Apart from Pakistan and India, Alimov indicated that in early 2016 the SCO assigned the position of dialoguing partners to Azerbaijan, Armenia and Nepal; in the autumn of 2015 the SCO also assigned the same position to Cambodia. Besides, there are also five countries expressing their desire to take part in the SCO’s issues in one way or another.