Like China, Russia and India are planning an anti-US platform
Here are participants, agenda items and what a Russian think tank thinks of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Samarkand. Marco Orioles's article
There is great anticipation in Samarkand for the opening, scheduled for September 15, of the XXII summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) – a regional dialogue body that unites China, Russia, India and five other countries of the Central Asia – in an event that will be dominated by the towering figures of Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping.
The participants
The high profile of the summit can be deduced from the parterre of the participants, who were revealed in a Facebook post by the press secretary of Uzbek president Shavkat Mirziyoyev, who holds the rotating presidency of the SCO.
In addition to the Chinese President, on his first trip abroad since the outbreak of the pandemic, to the Russian and Uzbekistani ones, there will be twelve other heads of state and government, both members of the Organization and present as observers and invited guests.
There will therefore be, as SCO members, the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, his Pakistani colleague Shehbaz Sharif, the President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, the President of Kyrgyzstan Sadyr Japarov and that of Tajikistan Emomali Rahmon.
The leaders of the observer countries include Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko, Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi and Mongolian president Ukhnaagiin Khürelsükh.
The guest countries will then be represented by Turkish President Erdogan, Azerbaijani Ilham Aliyev, Turkmen Serdar Berdimuhamedow and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.
The agenda of the summit
The official agenda of the meeting was revealed by the Uzbek President's own press officer and includes the following points: “strengthening economic and trade ties, promoting industrial and technological cooperation, dialogue on how to achieve the widest connectivity; digital transformation and green economy, consolidation of the international profile of the SCO ".
The summit seen from the Valdai Club
To go beyond the lines of the official press releases, it is an interesting contribution from the Valdai Discussion Club , a Russian think tank very familiar with the Kremlin, and signed by the member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Aleksander Vorontsov; the title of the text is "What to Expect from the Sco Summit in Samarkand".
According to the article, the participants will first and foremost be concentrated in the very definition of the role of the SCO in the international context, a role that both Russia and China want to strengthen to underline the identity of the Organization as a foreign and antithetical forum to the priorities of the West.
The enlargement process
Much attention will be paid to the issues of the enlargement of the SCO, which this year will accept Iran among its members, called to sign a Memorandum containing the commitments related to its membership.
Also on the agenda will be the start of Belarus's accession process, the request for acceptance as a dialogue partner by Egypt, Qatar and Saudi Arabia and the request for partnership presented by Bahrain and the Maldives.
The documents that China and Russia would like to have approved
But the heart of the work of this summit, the Valdai Club article reveals, will be linked to the adoption of a "broad package of documents on the current and future development of the SCO" that reflects the priorities of Russia and China.
There are two documents in particular indicated as having the highest priority: one linked to "cooperation in the development of mutual connectivity and the creation of efficient transport corridors", a theme that clearly follows the Chinese ambition to expand the spaces of its maxi infrastructure project of new Silk Roads; the second priority document touches on an aspect dear to both Moscow and Beijing and concerns "the gradual increase in the share of national currencies in mortgage payments and the cut in the use of the dollar", according to the well-known principle of de-dollarization.
The resistances
But if Russia and China, continues the text of the Valdai Club, hope to transform the SCO into a "center of resistance to the US and its allies", they have not reckoned with the host, represented by the same other partners of the organization. , decidedly more cautious in adopting an approach that places them in conflict with the West.
Revealing in this sense is the statement by an expert from Central Asian countries quoted in the Valdai Club article that "the goal of transforming the SCO into an anti-American platform, as Moscow would like, will not work".
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/come-cina-russia-india-piattaforma-anti-usa/ on Tue, 13 Sep 2022 06:44:39 +0000.