SHANGHAI: China will this week host leaders from Russia and Central Asian states for a regional club touted as a growing power, with the added presence of Iran’s president expected to draw global attention.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), founded 10 years ago as part of efforts to fight terrorism, religious extremism and separatism in the region, is being described by China as an increasingly significant political group.

Its annual summit will on Thursday be held in Shanghai, bringing together the presidents of original member states China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan along with Uzbekistan, which joined in 2001.

The leaders of Iran, Pakistan and Mongolia will also attend, with their nations granted observer status in 2004, as will Afghan President Hamid Karzai as an official “guest”.

India, also an observer nation, will send its petroleum minister.

“The SCO is constantly developing and expanding, attracting the attention of the world community,” assistant Chinese foreign minister Li Hui said Monday.

Yet while the SCO leaders will be intent on pushing its own agenda of expanding trade, security and defence ties, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is almost certain to steal the headlines.

The SCO participation of Iran, currently in the midst of a standoff with the West over its nuclear energy programme, has drawn fire from the United States, which remains wary about China and Russia’s cozy relationship with Tehran.

“It strikes me as strange that one would want to bring into an organization that says it’s against terrorism... one of the leading ‘terrorist nations’ in the world — Iran,” US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said this month.

Although Washington accuses Tehran of sponsoring terrorism, Beijing and Moscow disagree.

China and Russia have significant business interests in Iran, with energy-hungry Beijing in negotiations for a slice of the Islamic Republic’s oil reserves, the world’s fourth largest.

China and Russia have stymied US efforts for UN Security Council-led sanctions against Iran.

Tehran says it has a right to a civilian nuclear programme and denies US accusations it is trying to build an atomic bomb.

Guo Xiangang, an Iranian expert at the China Institution of International Studies, a government think-tank, said the Iranian nuclear issue would likely not be on the agenda during the SCO summit.

However he expected it to be discussed when Mr Ahmadinejad holds a scheduled post-summit bilateral meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao on Friday.

Mr Ahmadinejad is also due to give a speech at the summit and hold a press conference on Friday before departing China.

Aside from Iran’s attendance, the SCO has also provoked concerns in the West that it is trying to fashion itself as a counterweight to growing US influence in central Asia.

This was highlighted at last year’s SCO leaders’ summit in Almaty when the group called for a timetable for the withdrawal of American bases from central Asia.

Nevertheless, China has dismissed such concerns as baseless and assistant foreign minister Li insisted on Monday that the SCO “does not target any country”.

Independent Moscow-based defence analyst Pavel Felgenhauer said fears over the organization’s growing status were premature as SCO nations had few real common interests.

“It doesn’t have a military dimension, military exercises, joint staff or anything like Nato,” said Felgenhauer. “The alliance is very loose because the interests do not coincide.”

The SCO has, however, recently expanded its original mandate to broader security issues as well as economics and trade.

The move reflects central Asia’s increasing importance as a source of oil and gas, especially for China,” said David Zweig, a political analyst at Hong Kong’s University of Science and Technology.

“(The meeting) signifies to a certain extent China’s ability to have greater influence in this part of the world — in an area that is now very important to China for energy and security reasons.”—AFP