DUSHANBE, May 28, Asia-Plus – Representatives from Tajik special services and power-wielding structures are taking part in a Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) command-staff drill, dubbed “Issyk-Kul – Antiteror 2007”, that started in Kyrgyzstan today, Asia-Plus has learned from a source at the Tajik State Committee for National Security.
This three-phased military exercise held at the training ground near the Issyk-Kul Lake involves representatives of power wielding structures from China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The purpose of the exercise is to rehearse cooperation and interaction in revealing and neutralizing member of terrorist groups.
The exercise scenario is based on a terrorist group infiltrating into Kyrgyz territory and taking hostages. The third phase of the exercise that will include simulated liquidation of illegal armed formation and release of hostages.
Representatives from the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), CIS Anti-terror Center, as well as countries having status of observers at the SCO, including Pakistan, Iran, India and Mongolia, are observing the exercise, which will last till May 31.
In the meantime, Itar Tass quoted Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev as saying on May 25 that the Shanghai Cooperation Organization is responsible for security in a region where almost half of humanity lives. “We see that our region plays an increasingly greater role in the world, because interest in the huge energy resources that the organization’ s member countries have is growing,” he said. The SCO member countries and observer states are a world bank of human capital and a promising labor market, Bakiyev said. This enhances the role of the countries, but at the same time “sharpens the economic struggle and world economic competition, and creates threats to security of the SCO countries; different interests increasingly often collide over this region”. The area of responsibility of the SCO is adjacent to hotbeds of conflicts and instability, Bakiyev went on to say. “Our common goal is not only to prevent the drawing of our countries into these conflicts on some or another side, but also help their settlement and the establishment of a zone of peace and stability in Asia”.
As for a SCO summit, due in Bishkek on August 16, Bakiyev said this meeting would be another important step in the development and strengthening of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. “We are preparing a number of important agreements in different spheres and a number of new initiatives,” he said.
