SCO expansion to be priority issue at summit in Ufa - Lavrov

MOSCOW, January 21. /TASS/. The SCO expansion will be one of the priority issues at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told a news conference in Moscow on Wednesday. “We’ve long moved to this line. Finally, in Dushanbe in the autumn 2014 a package of documents, which determine the criteria of membership in the organisation, was formed,” Lavrov said. “The applications of India and Pakistan will be discussed first. A rather broad consensus is being created. Iran also made a request to join the SCO. I believe that it is rather real, particularly if progress is achieved on Iran’s nuclear programme due to the fact that the criteria of joining the SCO envisions the absence of any UN sanctions against a country, which pretends to be member of the organisation,” he said. “There are a series of countries with the partner status and they want to be observers. The interest in expanding the status of different countries in the SCO is significant. I’m sure that progress in Ufa will be achieved,” Lavrov said. The summit will also focus on measures to step up economic cooperation, create conditions for deepening trade and investment relations, use national currencies in mutual payments and prospects for providing funding to projects in energy, transport and agriculture, he said. Commenting on the upcoming BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) summit, Lavrov said a decision had been made to set up a BRICS Development Bank. “We’ll discuss the implementation of these agreements in practice,” he said. “The foreign political coordination within BRICS and SCO increases. We are optimistic with these two events. Of course, responsibility is big,” Lavrov said. Read more