Moscow hosts meeting of SCO defence officials

MOSCOW, October 28. /TASS/. Defence officials from Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan alongside representatives of Uzbekistan’s embassy to Russia - member countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) - have arrived in Moscow to attend a meeting of defence officials in charge of international military interaction held in the Russian capital on Wednesday. Sergey Koshelev of the Russian Defence Ministry said the meeting summed up implementation of the agreements on enhancing SCO defence ministries’ cooperation in security, which the SCO member countries’ defence ministers approved at the conference held in the Russian second-largest city of St. Petersburg in June 2015. The delegations discussed approaches and adopted documents needed for implementation of a Russian initiative on establishing a mechanism of cooperation between the defence ministries of the SCO nations aimed at organising coordination of military interaction, at exchanging information and at holding consultations. The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) is a permanent regional international association established in Shanghai on June 15, 2001. Joint counteraction to terrorism and extremism; cooperation in education as well as in energy, the oil and gas sector, transport, telecommunications and other spheres are listed as top priorities for the SCO nations. Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, China, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan are the current member countries, with Afghanistan, India, Iran, Mongolia and Pakistan having a status of observers and Belarus, Turkey and Sri Lanka - of dialogue partners. At a summit in Russia’s city of Ufa, the SCO decided to admit India and Pakistan as fully-fledged members and they are to join the SCO in 2016. The SCO countries account for nearly 25 percent of the Earth’s population - 1.597 billion people, with the joint GDP amounting to some $11.6 trillion. Read more