SCO MFA Council Meeting Takes Place in Bishkek

9 July 2007: Bishkek

On 09 July 2007 the capital of Kyrgyzstan hosted a meeting of the Council of Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation member states. The Kyrgyz Foreign Minister Ednan Karabayev told a news conference that the meeting had approved the agenda and made decisions on a number of issues concerning the conference of the Heads of State Council due in Bishkek on 16 August.

“The Treaty on long-term good-neighbourliness, friendship and cooperation among the SCO member states is a key document to be signed during the summit” – Karabayev noted. The inisters also discussed the progress of executing the instructions and decisions of the anniversary summit of the Organisation, which was held in Shanghai last year.

The meeting approved an annual report prepared by the SCO Secretary-General Bolat Nurgaliev. The report indicates that the reform of the Secretariat structure has by and large helped enhance the effectiveness of the Organisation. In the course of the meeting the Ministers exchanged opinions over prospects for further development of the SCO. “Nowadays the SCO has already become an influential new-type international organisation, which is based upon new values and goals. Therefore the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation is destined to play a vital role in ensuring international security” — Karabayev stressed.

In his words, the Ministers favoured a closer partnership with the SCO observer states, as well as with Afghanistan in the framework of the SCO-Afghanistan Contact Group, and rated positively the ongoing preparations for the SCO summit in Bishkek on 16 August 2007.

“On the whole today’s meeting has become yet another step in strengthening the SCO and developing its potential on geopolitical and geoeconomic levels” — the Kyrgyz Foreign Minister underlined.

The Foreign Minister of Kazakhstan Marat Tazhin, the Foreign Minister of China Yang Jiechi, the Foreign Minister of Kyrgyzstan Ednan Karabayev, the Foreign Minister of Russia Sergey Lavrov, the Foreign Minister of Tajikistan Khamrokhon Zarifi, the Foreign Minister of Uzbekistan Vladimir Norov and the SCO Secretary-General Bolat Nurgaliev took part in the SCO MFA Council meeting.

Source: Shanghai Cooperation Organisation