ECO Secretary General Praises Iran’s Role For Promoting ECO

Islamabad, Sept 6, IRNA – Sectary General of Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) on Wednesday praised the role of Iran in building the ECO as important regional organization. Talking to IRNA on the sidelines of the ECO meeting Dr. Shamil Aleskerov said that Iran is promoter of many activities and initiatives of the ECO in different fields. Expressing his views the ECO Sectary General said that ‘today’s meeting is the preparations of the charter for the establishment of inter Parliamentary assembly of the ECO.’ “It is very important meeting because now ECO will have inter-parliamentary dimension, he said. He added that participation of the Parliamentarians of the ECO member states is very essential for promoting ECO activities and to give them legal support. “It will also bring the ECO member states closer,” he believed. Aleskerov was of the opinion that ‘today’s meeting is a mile stone in development of the ECO as regional organization, I hope a big work has been done here by the delegations who give very good input to the draft of the meeting which will be the charter of this new organization, I am very satisfied with the ECO meeting in Islamabad.’ ECO Sectary General answering a question said that Iran’s role in the ECO is very important from the very beginning. “Iran is among the three founding members of this organization which in 1992 had become the organization of ten countries,” he said. He said that the ECO was established by Iran, Pakistan and Turkey and "now we have active participation of other member states but we always rely on our founding members and Iran is one of them." Dr. Shamil Aleskerov added that the ECO headquarters is based in Tehran and the country is helping the secretariat of the organization. He said Iran is hosting a lot of activities of ECO. “Iran is promoter of many activities and initiatives of ECO in different fields,” ECO Sectary General said. “Iran is our very respected and very important member state, it is nice to hear that Iran has assumed the chairmanship of the NAM,” he added. “It is an honor for Iran,” viewed Dr. Shamil Aleskerov. Economic Cooperation Organization is an intergovernmental regional organization established in 1985 by Iran, Pakistan and Turkey for the purpose of promoting economic, technical and cultural cooperation among the member states. It was the successor organisation of what was the Regional Cooperation for Development (RCD), founded in 1964, which ended activities in 1979. In the fall of 1992, the ECO expanded to include seven new members, namely Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan./end