India, Pakistan to join security group led by Russia, China

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) concluded a two-day meeting July 10 in Ufa, Russia, just two days after the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) summit in the same city. The summits are sure to have pleased Putin, who insists that a multi-polar world is emerging to counter the US vision of a world dominated by Washington.

Welcoming Pakistan into the SCO, Xi said: “China is willing to maintain close cooperation with Pakistan within the SCO framework”. “These processes are accompanied by increasing security challenges and threats, increasing uncertainty and instability in various regions of the world”.

The stance, which appears to show indirect criticism of Japan, was clarified in a joint statement adopted by the organization’s members at their meeting in Ufa.

Moscow’s ties with BRICS have become more vital amid the damage inflicted on Russia’s economy by Western sanctions, and Mr Putin’s exclusion from the Group of Eight gathering, which met last month as the G7.

“We must do this in BRICS as well as UN Security Council and in other groups of nations”, Modi said in his address in Hindi.

Srinagar: Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed on Thursday said the meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Pakistani counterpart in Russian Federation tomorrow was a “good” development.

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.

Modi also conveyed to Xi concerns in India over the economic corridor China is building through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK).

Still, Putin stressed that Russian Federation is willing to cooperate in all kinds of mechanisms with any country that is interested in such cooperation, including the USA and European countries.

“This is among the four reasons, based on which I should say the seventh BRICS summit is a complete success”, said Zhang Jun, Director General of Department of global Economic Cooperation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to reporters in Ufa.

He said friendship with China is the cornerstone of Pakistan’s foreign policy. India and Pakistan formally applied to join SCO in September 2014.

India had majorly dropped its crude imports from Iran under United States pressure to limit its purchases of oil from the Islamic republic over Iran’s nuclear programme.