On June 17, the Council of heads of the member-states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) will meet for the first time in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan. This means that the leaders of Russia, China and Central Asian countries (i.e., Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan), who have used to meet annually since 1996, will now hold their sessions within the framework of a full-fledged international organisation with clearly defined statutory goals and fairly vast opportunities.
Judging by world yardsticks, the organisation has been set up within
an unprecedentedly brief span of time covering the period from the summer of 2001 till today. Now that the laborious preparatory work has been completed, the atmosphere of a pause before the SCO's real start will be felt in Tashkent.
The six countries' leaders are expected to sign an agreement on the fight against drug trafficking in the region, to officially open the regional anti-terrorist centre which is already working in the Uzbek capital, and to endorse the provision on an observer status under the SCO. These measures will testify to the SCO's role as part of the international structure and to its members' cooperation in the security sphere.
Participants in the Tashkent summit will also exchange opinions about another major forum to be held within the SCO's framework this fall. The forum, which is to be held at the level of the SCO members' heads of government, will make public their first plans of joint economic development. This second SCO's component, the economic one, is becoming more and more important for the organisation.
However, this will happen in autumn. Meanwhile, in Tashkent now the observers will try to catch something different in the leaders' speeches, i.e., the elements of political philosophy of the SCO as a project of interaction of a group of countries in one of the most promising regions of the world.
This is indeed an interesting region. Active interaction and integration of different civilisations was under way in the region even before the arrival of the Alexander the Great's army there. Today, the countries and peoples forming the SCO represent a complex mix of various religions - Islam. Christianity and Buddhism; a real treasure-trove of diverse historical experience and, finally, a sum total of rather big economic potentials. They have something to tell to each other and the world, for instance in the sphere of political wisdom or the ability to give an example of economic openness for investments and projects.
Actually, the conception of Central Asia which is being formed now within the SCO is similar to that proposed recently by the G-8 leaders who discussed the idea of a Greater Middle East at their summit in Sea Island (USA). It is worth noting though that the SCO prefers the term "joint development" to "reforms". Naturally, no one prevents the SCO from giving other regions and peoples an example of how they can build their common future based on respectful attitude to each other and work for security and development so needed by all these countries.
