Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Progress

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Thursday, September 25, 2003

Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Progress

On September 23, Prime ministers of the member states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) held talks in Beijing. The talks have attained substantial achievements, symbolizing that the SCO has put an end to its initial stage of work and is now entering into a new era for an all-round, stable development and will play independently a role in the international community.

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On September 23, Prime ministers of the member states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) held talks in Beijing. Prime ministers of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan focused their discussion on the economic and trade cooperation within the framework of SCO and exchanged views on improving organization mechanism and promoting concrete cooperation. The talks have attained substantial achievements, symbolizing that the SCO, established in Shanghai, China, has put an end to its initial stage of work and is now entering into a new era for an all-round, stable development and will play independently a role in the international community.

In last May, summit meeting was held in Moscow during President Hu Jintao's visit to Russia. The main purpose of the Prime ministers' meeting this time is to discuss and find out how to put into effect the essentials of the Moscow summit meeting, namely to push forward SCO cooperation at various levels in all fields so as to ensure a vigorous momentum in its development. Economic cooperation is a key area of the SCO, an integrated indication of the SCO to strengthen and deepen the collaboration for mutual benefits in the new era, corresponding to the trend of economic globalization and regional integration.

At the first SCO Prime ministers' meeting in Alma-ata two years ago, the six-countries officially kicked off the multilateral cooperation process. Since then, a mechanism of trade and transportation ministers' meeting of the six countries has been established with the trade and investment facilitation process launched. In addition, they've begun to discuss ways and means for developing substantial cooperation in fields of economy and trade with basic thoughts and common views in regard to developing regional economic cooperation in the shaping. It was just on this basis that Prime ministers of the six countries approved the "Compendium for Multilateral Economic and Trade Cooperation of SCO Members" at this meeting. The compendium clearly defines the prior fields in regional cooperation, the current main tasks and long-range strategic goals. This document is of long-term, substantial guiding significance to the regional economic cooperation among the six countries. It indicates that SCO regional economic cooperation has begun to go into the right track, one of the pleasing achievements of the meeting.

At the meeting the Prime ministers found with satisfaction that a mechanism of multi-level, multi-field meeting within the SCO framework has been established with relevant legal foundations laid down. The Prime ministers came to the consensus that the SCO should take the common view and resolutions reached at Moscow summit meeting as an important guidance for the work to follow and should fulfill the decision made at Moscow. It has been decided that the two permanent bodies of the SCO, a secretariat based in Beijing and an anti-terrorist setup in Tashkent should be put into full operation no later than January 1, 2004. This indicates that substantial progress has been made in an all-around way for the SCO operation, a progress of profound significance. To achieve this, the six countries signed or approved important documents such as "SCO Anti-terrorism Setup and Personnel Arrangement" and "Memorandum for Technical Launching SCO Permanent Body"

The Prime ministers' meeting this time created brand-new conditions for further expanding and deepening the mutually beneficial cooperation and further strengthening the SCO construction. It is believed that the SCO is becoming a link of importance for intimating the good neighborliness, mutual trust and ties for friendly cooperation among the member states and is turning into an effective mechanism in promoting regional security and stability. As an active force in promoting world peace and development, the SCO will surely bring substantial benefits to the people of the member countries.

This is an article on the third page of People's Daily, September 24, by Li Wenyun and Ma Jian;translated by PD Online Staff Gao Lanrong

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