Seat for India in SCO put on the backburner?

[IndoCarib]

Ahead of a one-day meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) at the level of Prime Ministers in St. Petersburg on Monday, Russia and China have created intrigue with their nuanced comments on the meeting’s agenda.

An official spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry said that the Prime Ministers of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan will discuss SCO expansion, and more specifically, plans to extend full membership to India and Pakistan, grant observer status to Afghanistan and affiliate Turkey as a SCO dialogue partner.

However, China’s Vice-Foreign Minister Cheng Guoping, who briefed journalists on Premier Wen Jiabao’s trip to St. Petersburg to attend the SCO meeting, failed to mention the SCO expansion as part of the meeting’s agenda. Instead, he spoke vaguely about “planning for the development of the organisation for the next phase.”

Taking the cue from the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Xinhua news agency said nothing of the group’s proposed expansion in its Moscow-datelined report on Sunday on the coming SCO meeting. The subject was conspicuously absent from the “three proposals” for the further development of the SCO that the Chinese Ambassador to Russia made in an interview for the Xinhua story.

Earlier Moscow and Beijing both said that the SCO expansion was discussed during their foreign ministry consultations that took place in Moscow on October 31. But again, there were nuanced differences in the Russian and Chinese official announcements.

“The sides called for accelerating the SCO enlargement in keeping with the decisions of the Council of the SCO Heads of State in Astana in June,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on the consultations between Deputy Foreign Minister Alexei Borodavkin and his Chinese counterpart Cheng Guoping.

The statement issued by the Chinese Foreign Ministry said nothing about speeding up the expansion process, saying only that the two sides agreed “to step up legal and technical preparations for the organisation's membership expansion.”

“We share very close positions with China and are actively pushing the idea of SCO expansion, as the Borodavkin-Cheng consultations demonstrated,” said Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich. “I’d like to emphasize that we jointly with China advocate accelerating the organisation’s expansion.”

The Hindu : News / International : Seat for India in SCO put on the backburner?

 

[S10]

SCO serves something of a counterweight to American-Europe alliance, despite being more loosely organized. Pakistan also wants membership in SCO. China is concerned that troubles between India and Pakistan might fracture the organization. A fractured SCO will be ineffective at its intended purposes. However, excluding Pakistan and India will also restrict the potential of SCO, that potential being the biggest economic-military cooperation pact in the world. I think China will keep delaying the matter until Pakistan and India can settle their differences sufficiently.

 

[LiberalAtheist]

SCO doesn't have anything on NATO

 

[Bhairava]

Nothing great.

 

[somebozo]

May be it is because of concerns about India cozying with USA..If one country has to be excluded then excluding India makes from sense because Pakistan is located are a more strategic cross roads and have geographic proximity to China, Russia and Central Asia as well ability to reflect on events in Central Asia and Afghanistan

 

[Ammyy]

India with Pakistan and China in a single pool ........ I am in love with SCO

 

[Lankan Ranger]

Sri Lanka a dialogue partner in SCO........

 

[perplexed]

May be it is because of concerns about India cozying with USA..If one country has to be excluded then excluding India makes from sense because Pakistan is located are a more strategic cross roads and have geographic proximity to China, Russia and Central Asia as well ability to reflect on events in Central Asia and Afghanistan

1. I will tell you what the geography is !!

If INDIA doesn't allow airspace for civilian aircrafts from pakistan, then you would have a hard time reaching shanghai or other chinese city like what happened when Musharraf nearly had to cancel his plans to China for a meeting...

2. Can you even appreciate why inclusion of INDIA in SCO was considered in first place ? huh ? just talking BS make you look like a joke !!

 

[perplexed]

--self delete--

 

[AADHAAR]

Nothing great.

yup .... Nothing great.

 

[SpArK]

Who Cares!

Nobody is in a hurry.

 

[WHITESMOKE]

SCO... And how much influence it has over the world that India is dying to join it within months..?

 

[rai_kamal]

I think SCO can be a good organization in future but currently its progressing..Also i simply don't like its name it is a name of chinese city name..
Change its name to something common,some abbreviated name like NATO,UN,etc..
Sanghai is something like chinese specific and not central asia..

 

[Vasily Zaytsev]

SCO is only for the name's sake................nothing great...............when time comes the members would be at eachothers throat.............and if India and Pakistan are joining the group.............then its fate would as good as the Saarc.................so good luck...................no benefits or loss for India if decides to join it or otherwise.

 

[Raje amar]

i see a differance of openion in the current core members of the SCO.

Russia will be insisting on the quick inclusion of India, while the China is reluctant for this. And China is interested in inclusion of Pakistan & other Middle East nations, but Russia may be resisting it or may have some preconditions.

I doubt the future of SCO with all Russia, China & India on the same fourm. no dission will be opssible as all of them have different strategic interests and no common goal.