The leaders of China, Russia or Iran meet for 48 hours to strengthen regional security
Historic Samarkand picks up the baton from Dushanbe and hosts for 48 hours the annual meeting of the Council of Heads of State of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) aimed at strengthening regional security. The summit is being held under the international anxiety generated by the war in Ukraine and will be the scene of a meeting between VladÍmir Putin and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, who is leaving his country for the first time since the start of the pandemic. ‘The world is coming to Samarkand’, is the slogan of this edition of the SCO, in which Iran will cease to be an observer country to become a full member of this organization. The next to join the list of this kind of NATO in an Asian version will be Belarus. Chinese and Russians lead a union that serves to try to curb US ambitions in the area.
The SCO is made up of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan and India. Other countries such as Belarus, Mongolia, Iran and Afghanistan (their role is not clear after the arrival of the Taliban Emirate and for this reason it will be one of the main topics on the agenda of the planned meetings between the heads of state) are observers and at present edition, the presidents of Turkmenistan, Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan attend as guests.
The presence of these last two is in the air after the last few hours of violent clashes between their armies that left more than a hundred dead. The South Caucasus is on fire again two years after the last armed clash in Nagorno-Karabakh. The two countries hold each other responsible in this latest outbreak of violence. Yerevan claims that several border towns have been bombed by its neighbor and that it has responded to the provocation. Baku, for its part, says its military positions were hit first.
In recent weeks there has also been speculation about the possible assistance of the Syrian president, Bashar Al Assad, an ally of Iran and Russia.
region security
“Considering the current international situation, this summit has a special meaning,” said Putin’s foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov. “This will be the most important event of Chinese head of state diplomacy on the eve of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, which shows the great importance that China attaches to the SCO,” were the words of the Chinese foreign spokeswoman. , Mao Ning, in the hours before the summit.
The leaders of Russia and China already met in Beijing in February, shortly before the start of the invasion of Ukraine. Xi Jiping will take advantage of the meeting to promote his Global Security Initiative, a plan he presented in April in response to the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) of which the United States, Japan, Australia and India are part.
SCO General Secretary Zhang Ming told the media that the goal is for this organization to “play a more important role in maintaining security and stability” and “contribute to the development of a global management system in a fairer and more prudent direction.
For analysts such as Raffaello Pantucci, from the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore and author of “Sinostan: China’s Inadvertent Empire”, the summit “shows that the democratic order promoted by the West is not the only structure that exists (…) A As the West promotes a world order built around structures developed after the Second World War, those who lead the opposition to that model adopt their own institutions to demonstrate their options”, as reflected in a column published by the portal Nikkei Asia.
#Putin #advocate #alternative #world #order #Samarkand #summit