Tajik President Emomali Rahmon will pay visit to the Kazakh capital of Astana next week to participate in a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and attend an official opening ceremony of EXPO 2017, a source in the Tajik government told Asia-Plus in an interview.
The SCO summit will take place in Astana from June 8-9 and Rahmon is expected to hold a number of bilateral meetings on the sidelines of the summit.
Meanwhile China announced yesterday that India and Pakistan’s admission as full members to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization will be formalized at the Organization’s summit in Astana.
During the 2015 summit in Ufa, Russia, the SCO formally adopted a resolution starting the process to admit India and Pakistan into the organization as full members.
Both the countries signed a Memorandum of Obligations to join the organization at last year’s summit in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization currently has six full members — China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. India and Pakistan are acceding states. Afghanistan, Belarus, Iran and Mongolia are four observer states, and SCO’s dialogue partners include Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Turkey. ACEAN, CIS and Turkmenistan are guest attendances.
The Organization’s six full members account for 60% of the land mass of Eurasia and its population is a quarter of the world’s population.
Expo 2017 is an International Exposition scheduled to take place between June 10 and September 10, 2017 in Astana, Kazakhstan. The expo's theme is "Future Energy", and aims to create a global debate between countries, nongovernmental organizations, companies and the general public on the crucial question: “how do we ensure safe and sustainable access to energy for all while reducing CO2 emissions?”
Multinational corporations namely Samsung, Cisco Systems, and Shell are sponsors of Expo 2017. Kazakh sponsors include NCOC, Air Astana, JSC Kazkommertsbank, JSC Samruk Energy, and JSC Kazpochta.
Expo 2017 reportedly attracted €125 million in sponsorships from large international companies.
