SCO summit in Qingdao to become first meeting of Shanghai Eight leaders

BEIJING, June 5. /TASS/. The upcoming summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Qingdao will go down in the organization’s history as the first meeting of the leaders of the member states of this organization held in the Shanghai Eight format, SCO Secretary General Rashid Alimov said in an exclusive interview with TASS on Tuesday. "The event will usher in a new stage of the SCO’s development. I believe that this phase will be marked by the SCO’s growing role and importance in global affairs," he stressed. Much was done in the period between the SCO summits in Astana in 2017 and the upcoming summit in Qingdao. "As a result, around 20 documents have been put on the agenda of the forthcoming meeting of the Council of Heads of State, which concern almost all regional and global issues - from the uncompromising war on terror and extremism to the expansion of cooperation in the areas of the economy, trade and environmental protection," Alimov said. The Qingdao Declaration will be the summit’s main final political document, he said. "This important document will include SCO member states’ consolidated assessments of the current regional and global situation, and will also clarify the SCO’s approaches to resolving pressing regional and global issues, as well as define major areas of the organization’s activities for the near future," Alimov explained. "Being a comprehensive document, it will reflect all the global political patterns the SCO has been focused on." The SCO summit in Qingdao (Shandong Province, China) will be held on June 9-10. The visits of the leaders of Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Iran were scheduled to coincide with the summit. The heads of the SCO member states - Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, India and Pakistan - will discuss regional security and development of trade-economic cooperation, as well as cooperation in all spheres. Read more