Tajik President Emomali Rahmon met with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Secretary-General, Vladimir Norov, here on May 17 on the sidelines of the High-Level International Conference on “International and Regional Cooperation on Countering Terrorism and its Financing through Illicit Drug Trafficking and Organized Crime.”
According to the Tajik president’s official website, they discussed state and prospects of further expansion of economic, cultural, educational and scientific cooperation between Tajikistan and the SCO member nations.
Rahmon and Norov reportedly also exchanged views on the issues related to implementation of large projects in the fields of energy, transportation, industry, construction, telecommunications and agriculture.
Tajik leader stressed that Tajikistan is supporter of modernization of the Organization’s economic platform, implementation of projects in the framework of the One Belt One Road Initiative (BRI), and creation of transportation-logistics routes providing access for Central Asia to the Southeast Asia markets via China and to European markets via Russia.
They also discussed collaboration between the SCO member nations in providing regional security, strengthening control of Tajikistan’s common border with Afghanistan and improving complicated political situation in some regions of Afghanistan, the Tajik president’s website said.
The SCO was founded at a Summit in Shanghai in 2001 by the presidents of Russia, China, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization currently has eight full members — China, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan, India, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. 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, Turkmenistan and the United Nations are guest attendances.
Based in Beijing, the SCO Secretariat is the primary executive body of the organization. It serves to implement organizational decisions and decrees, drafts proposed documents (such as declarations and agendas), functions as a document depository for the organization, arranges specific activities within the SCO framework, and promotes and disseminates information about the SCO. The SCO Secretariat coordinates the activity of the SCO and provides informational, analytical, legal, organizational and technical support.
