SCO summit in Tashkent opens "new chapter"

The 10th annual summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) was held in the Uzbek capital Tashkent on Friday, June 11, against very special backgrounds.

Global financial crisis is still gloomy with lingering uncertainties, and the relations among the major powers is amid an in-depth readjustment on one hand and, on the other hand, the situation in Central Asia is undergoing complex and profound changes, the Afghanistan issue is hard to have a favorable turn and the three "evil forces" of terrorism, separatism and extremism remain rampant in the Central Asia region. With these immense pressures, how leaders of SCO member states pinpoint the priority direction of cooperation within the SCO framework and is the SCO capable of withstanding severe tests and giving scope to its own potentials. These questions are likely to draw more attention.

In the past year, the SCO has played a very positive role in bolstering regional stability, spurring the economic recovery of its member states and striving for common development, and regional cooperation has stepped up in all fields: SCO members have intensified their mutual political and economic support, and launched a new mechanism of consultation on global or regional issues and a disaster emergency mechanism, so the SCO's capabilities for going into action have further heightened; the SCO member nations have joined efforts to combat terrorism, drug production and trafficking and organized crime side by side and carry out security and safety cooperation for such major international events as the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the ongoing Shanghai World Expo.

The SCO has striven to reinforce regional economic cooperation and help its member states to tide over the crisis hand in hand, and it has pioneered to carry out reforms on international monetary and financial systems and improve global economic and trade structures. Meanwhile, the international environment facing the SCO is now apt to be grimmer with the adjacency of hot spots in the region and the aggravation of international competitiveness on a global scale.

Under such new circumstances, the SCO has attached great importance to substantial cooperation, beefed up its self-development and expand its external exchanges. During the Tashkent summit, the participating sides summed up the attainments made since the preceding summit, discussed pressing issues of further deepening multilateral cooperation within the SCO; they also conferred on decisions or plans to deepen cooperation among SCO members in the political, security, economic, cultural and humanitarian realms and to advance the organization's external exchanges..
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