Prime Minister Narendra Modi will leave for Tashkent, Uzbekistan, on Thursday morning to attend the annual summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) which will kick off the process of Indi
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will leave for Tashkent, Uzbekistan, on Thursday morning to attend the annual summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) which will kick off the process of India’s accession to the grouping as a full fledged member along with Pakistan.
On India’s SCO membership, secretary (West) in the MEA Sujata Mehta said, “The process of India’s accession to the SCO will start with a signature on the base document which is called the memorandum of obligations.”
Asked whether India would become a full member of the SCO immediately, she said there was a schedule laid down for India to sign more than 30 other documents and it will happen as the year goes by.
Apart from meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping during which there will be a full review of bilateral ties, Prime Minister Modi will also have bilateral meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Uzbekistan President Islam Karimov. On whether Mr Modi will have a meeting with Pakistan President Mamnoon Hussain, she said India does not even officially know who will represent Pakistan at the summit. At the same time, she said the Prime Minister will have couple of other bilaterals.
Asked about Pakistan also getting membership of SCO, Ms Mehta said India’s membership of the SCO or any other bloc is not “predicated” by absense of any country. She said India follows “flexible multilateralism” and it is quite happy to get involved in multiple processes in extending cooperation.
Ms Mehta said the membership will provide India an opportunity to have extended cooperation with members of the grouping including China and Pakistan.
Ms Mehta said India is also keen on deepening its security-related cooperation with the SCO and its Regional Anti-Terrorism Structure (RATS), which specifically deals with issues relating to security and defence.
Asked whether SCO membership will help India get a transit route for sending goods to Central Asia and Afghanistan through Pakistan, she said the issue has been taken up at the bilateral level. At the same time, she added overall there will be “net gain to what we have already.”
With majority of the SCO countries having huge reserves of oil and gas, India is expected to get greater access to major hydrocarbon projects in Central Asia after its entry into the bloc. Mehta said there is a talk of an SCO energy club and India aims to benefit from it.
The SCO was founded at a summit in Shanghai in 2001 by the Presidents of Russia, China, Kyrgyz Republic, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. India, Iran and Pakistan were admitted as observers at the 2005 Astana Summit. The Tashkent SCO Summit in June 2010 had lifted the moratorium on new membership, paving the way for expansion of the grouping.
