India and Pakistan’s admission as full members to the China backed Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) will be formalised at the political and security grouping’s summit in Kazakhstan.
India and Pakistan as the full members at the Astana summit on June 8-9 and expect the Astana summit will complete the admission procedures for the two countries.
Background
During the 2015 summit in Ufa, Russia, the SCO formally adopted a resolution starting the process to admit India and Pakistan into the organisation as full members. Both the countries signed a Memorandum of Obligations to join the organisation at last year’s summit in Tashkent.
Importance of Cooperation
- The presence of China and India, the world’s most populous countries, would make SCO the organisation with the largest population coverage.
- Improve their relations and inject new impetus to the development of the SCO.
- The admission of India and Pakistan as full members would help improve their bilateral relations.
Shanghai Cooperation Organisation
- The political and security grouping headquartered in Beijing was founded in 2001.
- It comprises China Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan as full members.
- It mainly aimed at military cooperation between the members and involves intelligence-sharing, counter-terrorism operations in Central Asia.
- Currently Afghanistan, Belarus, India, Iran, Mongolia and Pakistan have observer status.
- SCO has six dialogue partners, namely the Republic of Azerbaijan, the Republic of Armenia, the Kingdom of Cambodia, the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, the Republic of Turkey, and the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka.
Source : The Hindu
GS II : Bilateral, regional and global groupings and agreements involving India and/or affecting India’s interests