India, Pakistan to join China, Russia in security group

He was talking to Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of SCO summit in Ufa.

A resolution was passed Friday on starting the procedures of granting India and Pakistan the SCO full membership at the 15th bloc summit held in the southwestern Russian city of Ufa.

The full membership was granted by the SCO Council of Heads of State on Friday and now Pakistan will have to fulfill certain statutory and legal requirements before the country formally becomes a full member. “We have everything we need to succeed”. The two nuclear-armed states now have observer status, along with Mongolia, Iran and Afghanistan. “I also take this opportunity to congratulate Pakistan on joining the SCO”, he said.

Ufa, which means “small” in the Russian Tatar language, is largely unknown on the world stage but is an important industrial and culture hub for Russia.

But Uzbekistan, Central Asia’s most populous republic, signalled worries at a key meeting about the possibility of tensions between India and Pakistan holding up the SCO’s work, a senior official familiar with India’s ties with the grouping told The Telegraph.

China, Xi said, appreciated Pakistan’s efforts in pushing forward the Afghan peace process, and would work together with Pakistan to play a constructive role in helping Afghanistan realise national reconciliation and peaceful development at an early date.

The two leaders, whose countries share a longstanding and bitter rivalry, agreed that Modi will visit Pakistan next year and to cooperate with each other on security matters.

India has been an actively participating in SCO activities that are open to Observers.

On the occasion, Russia’s First Deputy Economic Development Minister Alexey Likhachev said that the declaration “gives assessment on the current global political and economic scenario and reflects the common approaches of the BRICS countries on the most topical issues of multilateral co-operation”.

The SCO development strategy for the period until 2025 called on all nuclear powers to abstain from deploying their nuclear weapons in the territories of other states. The SCO member states occupy a territory of over 30 million square kilometres, or three-fifths of the Eurasian continent, with a population of 1.5 billion – a quarter of world’s population.