SCO to build up anti-terrorist activities.

BEIJING, February 3 (Itar-Tass) -- The Shanghai Cooperation
Organization (SCO) will build up its anti-terrorist activities, new SCO
Secretary General Muratbek Imanaliyev told reporters on Wednesday.
"First and foremost, the SCO Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure in
Tashkent will be built up," he noted.
The SCO general secretary stressed the SCO growing role in ensuring
the long-term peace settlement in Afghanistan. "All SCO states are working
in this direction within the anti-terrorist coalition, each country makes
its diversified contribution. Much is done to attain the stabilization of
the current situation in this country," Imanaliyev said.
"The SCO has already voiced its support to those decisions and
recommendations, which were laid down in a communique issued at the London
international conference on Afghanistan," the SCO secretary general said.
"The keynote in the statements of all SCO foreign ministers at the forum
was the idea about the necessary support to the international community to
solve the Afghan problem," he added. The Moscow meeting on the Afghan
issue at the level of deputy foreign ministers preceded the London
conference, Imanaliyev recalled. The SCO general position on Afghanistan
was also outlined at the Moscow meeting. "The SCO is ready to participate
in a Kabul conference. We hope that the Afghan government will invite us
to the meeting," he pointed out.
"All SCO states are active participants of the anti-terrorist
coalition, each of them is doing its best to help the International
Security Assistance Force. Thanks to the SCO efforts the northern network
providing for the anti-terrorist operation in Afghanistan was formed," the
secretary general remarked.
Alongside, further SCO expansion is "a definite perspective,"
Imanaliyev said.
"Further expansion is a definite perspective of our organization,
which is seeking for this goal like all similar structures," he said. "The
SCO as any other organization cannot be taken in the static mode,
everything is developing that I consider necessary not only to support,
but also to improve and to give a new sense to it," Imanaliyev noted.
"I would formulate in one statement accession criteria for new members
under development by SCO specialists. Each new country admitted in the SCO
should build up our organization rather than otherwise," he said.
"As for the issue what countries will be the first to join it (the
SCO) I have no special personal preferences. Currently Iran and Pakistan
made two entry bids and we take it with special attention," Imanaliyev
said.
He refuted allegations that under the influence of the global
financial crisis the organization intends to curtail its budget that is
formed from the quotas determined by the financial shares of the SCO
states. "We do not intend to cut or sequester it, otherwise the issue of a
higher budget is raised," the SCO secretary general said.
-0-baz/usn