The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), where Russia and China call the shots, gathered yesterday to consider changes to its membership guidelines which could lead to further expansion for the bloc.
At its annual gathering in the Uzbek capital Tashkent, leaders including Russia’s Dmitry Medvedev and China’s Hu Jintao were expected to adopt new guidelines seen as potentially opening the door to SCO observer nations India and Pakistan.
But Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the leader of another SCO observer nation, Iran, was expected to stay away from the summit after his country was slapped with fresh sanctions approved by the UN Security Council this week.
Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the guidelines due to be approved yesterday would not allow countries under UN sanctions to obtain membership, a major blow to Iran which sorely needs international support.
“Tomorrow [Friday] a provision will be approved,” Lavrov told reporters, when asked to confirm that under soon-to-be-adopted rules, a nation seeking SCO membership must not be subject to UN sanctions.
“Among membership criteria, will be the one you’ve mentioned,” Lavrov said late on Thursday, without referring to Iran directly.
Russia’s Kommersant newspaper reported that the provision was pushed through by Moscow and Beijing and reflects an increasing unwillingness on their part to jeopardize relations with the West because of Iran.
Despite close economic ties with the Islamic republic, Russia and China — two of the five UN Security Council veto-wielding permanent members — this week supported a new round of UN sanctions against Iran.
The Kommersant report, citing diplomatic sources in SCO member countries, said Ahmadinejad had wanted an invitation to the event, but Russia, China and Kazakhstan, the current chairman of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, had “politely denied” it.
In contrast, Ahmadinejad was warmly greeted at the SCO annual summit in Russia last June, which he chose for his first foreign trip following his disputed re-election victory.
Senior Russian officials have denied Moscow had asked the Iranian leader to stay away this time.
Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan and Turkmen leader Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov were also in attendance at the summit.
Analysts said approving the new membership guidelines would not immediately bring in new SCO members since observer nations like India and Pakistan have testy ties and China has not yet signaled its support for the group’s expansion.
A Chinese diplomat, Zhang Xiao, said the blueprint to be adopted yesterday was just the start of work in this direction.
“In fact, approving this document does not automatically mean the expansion of the SCO,” said Zhang, deputy director-general for European and Central Asian affairs at China’s foreign ministry. “In order to accept new member states SCO members have to work out a range of new documents. In other words, the job already done represents only one percent, we have another 99 percent to do.”
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