ASTANA, July 5 (RIA Novosti) - China will chair the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), an expanded summit meeting of the organization resolved Tuesday. "We have agreed that the chairmanship of the SCO should be passed to China," Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev said opening the summit meeting in the Kazakh capital of Astana Tuesday. The leaders of Russia, Kazakhstan, China, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan are expected to sign a convention on regional cooperation against terrorism, separatism, and extremism. Mongolian President Nambaryn Enkhbayar is attending the summit as an observer.
The SCO leaders will also sign a resolution granting Pakistan, Iran, and India observer status in the organization, an inter-government agreement on cooperation in providing assistance in dealing with emergency situations, and an agreement on procedures to arrange and conduct combined antiterrorist operations.
The declaration that established the SCO was signed on June 15, 2001, in Shanghai. The organization is designed to promote mutual trust and friendship between the member states, and foster effective political, economic, scientific, and cultural cooperation, as well as contacts in the sphere of education, energy, transport, environment.
