Putin to meet Iran's Rouhani at SCO summit in Ufa - Kremlin spokesman

MOSCOW, July 2. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected to have a meeting with his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani at a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) due to be held in the Russian city of Ufa on July 9-10, the Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Thursday. Peskov has said Rouhani's arrival in Ufa is expected. "Indeed, we are preparing this [bilateral] meeting," the Kremlin spokesman said. The SCO summit will be held in Ufa some 1,360 kilometres southeast of Moscow on July 8-10 after the end of BRICS summit (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) is a permanent regional international association established in Shanghai on June 15, 2001. 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 previous summit in Tajikistan’s capital of Dushanbe, India and Pakistan bid to become fully-fledged members of the organisation. The SCO population stands at 1.597 billion people, or one fourth of the Earth population, while the aggregate gross domestic product (GDP) amounts to $11.6 trillion. Read more