Over 600 journalists to cover SCO summit in Astana

ASTANA, June 9. /TASS/. Over 600 journalists will cover the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s summit in Kazakhstan’s capital Astana on Friday, Kazakh Foreign Ministry Spokesman Anuar Zhainakov said. "More than 600 media representatives have received accreditation for the SCO summit in Astana, including 466 foreigners. The summit’s press center has already started working," Zhainakov wrote on his Facebook page. The SCO countries’ leaders will hold talks and will be later joined by the delegation members. They will give assessments on the situation in the organization and define its goals and prospects of development. The key issues on the summit’s agenda will be the accession of India and Pakistan as full-fledged members of the organization and also the discussion on the Convention on Combating Extremism. The Declaration on the Establishment of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization was signed in China’s Shanghai in June 2001 by the six founding states - Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Afghanistan, Belarus, India, Pakistan, Iran and Mongolia currently enjoy observer status while Sri Lanka, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Cambodia and Nepal are dialogue partners. India and Pakistan's SCO accession procedures began in 2015. Read more