SHANGHAI, June 14 (RIA Novosti) - Leaders of the member countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization will gather in the China Wednesday for a two-day jubilee summit.
The leaders of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Russia and China will mark five years since the regional security forum was founded in Shanghai in July 2001.
Under the chairmanship of the host, Chinese leader Hu Jintao, the SCO summit is expected to review the five years of the organization's activities, exchange opinions on international and regional affairs and draw up plans for further development. The leaders are also expected to sign a set of agreements, the forum's press center said.
The SCO originally dealt with security and confidence-building measures, including border conflicts, terrorism and militant Islam. Today the organization also covers economics, transportation, culture, disaster relief, and law enforcement, but security and economic cooperation are priorities.
In an interview ahead of the summit, Foreign Minister of Kyrgyzstan Alikbek Dzhekshenkulov said the Kyrgyz leadership planned to discuss how to enliven economic cooperation within the organization.
"The SCO is a rapidly developing organization, where Russia, China and Kazakhstan could play the role of an economic driving force that would help less developed members to catch up," he said.
The summit is also expected to form a SCO business council.
Tajikistan's Foreign Minister Talbak Nazarov said he expected SCO leaders to discuss anti-terrorism, extremism, separatism and drug trafficking.
He said Tajikistan had managed to resolve peacefully border disputes with China and could now focus on trade and economic ties.
"Tajikistan is interested in studying China's experience in macroeconomic development and the use of new technologies in industry and services," Nazarov said.
More controversially, Iran - an SCO observer nation - will be represented by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and will hold bilateral and multilateral meetings with SCO leaders and discuss the international and regional situation.
Given the furor around the Islamic Republic's controversial nuclear program, the international community gave an equivocal welcome to the news that the hard-line leader would be attending the meeting.
Earlier in the month U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld expressed his surprise that "the leading terrorist nation in the world" was being invited into "an organization that says it's against terror."
However, officials have played down speculation that any of the four observers - India, Pakistan and Mongolia are the others - might become full members of the organization.
"The issue of the organization's international contacts will be brought up, of course," Deputy Russian Foreign Minister Alexander Alexeyev told RIA Novosti in a June 9 interview. "The leaders of the member states will make decisions. But no sensations should be expected."
China's Foreign Ministry said the Iranian nuclear program would not be highlighted at the summit, but added that Hu Jintao would meet with Ahmadinejad for bilateral negotiations on the program on the sidelines of the summit.
