ALMATY, April 29: The Shanghai group bringing together China and former Soviet republics is set to become a permanent international organization aimed at enhancing regional stability and security, Russia’s Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said on Tuesday.
The plan to form a Shanghai organisation comprising China, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan by the start of next year “is in the interests not only of the countries concerned but of other states interested in the security of the region and the wider sphere,” Ivanov told reporters.
“The organisation will help cooperation on political, economic, humanitarian and security issues,” Ivanov said after a meeting in Kazakhstan’s second city Almaty at which most of the six, with the exception of Uzbekistan, were represented by their foreign ministers.
The plan for a Shanghai organisation based on what is currently a loose-knit discussion forum could be formally approved at a summit of the countries’ leaders in Moscow on May 28 and 29, Ivanov said.
Earlier the ministers identified neighbouring Afghanistan as a source of problems such as drugs and terrorism which the organisation could address.
“Some forces have been tempted to destabilise the situation in Afghanistan ... as a result of the changed situation arising from events in Iraq,” Tajikistan’s Foreign Minister Talbak Nazarov warned.
“The threat from Afghanistan remains, and above all in relation to drug trafficking,” said Ivanov.
Central Asia is a key export route to Russia and Western countries for Afghanistan’s illicit drug production, which has increased since US-forces overthrew Afghanistan’s Taliban government in 2001.
“Recent world events must not lead to a weakening of the international community’s efforts to reconstruct Afghanistan’s economy,” read a communique released by the group.
The Shanghai group is one of many tools which Russia has used to influence its sometimes unstable former satellites in Central Asia. But the United States now exerts a sometimes contrary pull, in particular as it has based some of its forces in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.
On Monday the leaders of Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, meeting in the Tajik capital Dushanbe, announced they had set up a joint military command to oversee a rapid reaction force. —AFP
