Foreign ministers of the eight member states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) met today in Goa, India, to discuss important regional and international problems, especially foreign policy coordination, and the need to strengthen the United Nations central coordinating role of “reliable global security and sustainable economic growth,” TASS reported. The situation in Afghanistan was a major topic of discussion as member nations are concerned about any spillover of instability or terrorist activity from Afghanistan into the broader “SCO space.”
The SCO was founded at a summit in Shanghai in 2001 by the presidents of Russia, China, the Kyrgyz Republic, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. India and Pakistan became its permanent members in 2017.
One of the gathering’s main purposes was to prepare the agenda for the July 3-4 SCO heads-of- state summit in New Delhi which will formalize Iran’s membership and promote the process of Belarus’s admission as well. SCO expansion was a key topic of discussion. Memoranda of understanding were also issued on granting SCO dialogue-partner status to Bahrain, Kuwait, Myanmar, the Maldives, and the United Arab Emirates.
On economic matters, a major point of discussion was transition to national currencies in mutual settlements, a roadmap for which SCO Deputy Secretary General Grigoy Logvinov indicated that the SCO is working on.
