by M. K. BHADRAKUMAR
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi (2nd right) and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov (3rd left) in Tashkent on May 24
Membership in Shanghai Cooperation Organization will provide India and Pakistan a rare opportunity of co-habitation to kick-start a normalization process that eluded them for six decades. As a vista of unprecedented scale of interaction in security cooperation opens up, the two neighbors are likely to improve their ties
The foreign ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) who met at Tashkent Tuesday recommended to the summit meeting of the grouping slated to be held on June 23 in the Uzbek capital the signing of a memorandum of understanding granting membership to India and Pakistan.
For all purposes, the process of inducting the two South Asian countries as SCO members has touched the finish line.
It was in September 2014 that India formally applied for full membership. The SCO had granted ‘observer’ status to India and Pakistan ten years ago in 2005.
To be sure, Asian security and regional power dynamics is poised for a historic makeover. India and Pakistan are nuclear powers. They bring in a staggering 1500 million population under SCO’s canopy.
With their induction, SCO territory reaches the waters of the Indian Ocean and the grouping stance akimbo as a compelling presence on the edges of the Persian Gulf. Suffice it to say, the SCO’s transformation as a security organization takes a big leap forward.
The SCO will take up Iran’s membership question as soon as the formalities of India and Pakistan’s induction are completed. Conceivably, by the end of the decade, Iran will also have joined the SCO as full member.
Traditionally, China focused on SCO’s activities in the economic sphere, but lately, it shares Russia’s interest in the grouping’s profile as a security organization. The Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said at the Tashkent meeting,
- The SCO has become a paradigm of global and regional cooperation with great vitality and significant influence, and serves as a model of efficient cooperation by paying equal attention simultaneously to economic development and security cooperation.
No doubt, growing tensions between China and the US play a part here. Wang can take immense satisfaction that the meeting in Tashkent adopted a communique voicing support for the Chinese stance in the South China Sea dispute.
Taking a swipe at Washington (and Tokyo), the SCO foreign ministers strongly opposed “outsiders’ interference” and attempts to “internationalize” the dispute.
This is the first time that SCO lined up to support China in its hour of need. There is poignancy insofar as China is the recipient here. The SCO support takes away some of the sting of the G-7 barbs voiced at the summit meeting in Japan. In geostrategic terms, SCO support has much greater relevance than G-7 beating distant drums.
The point is, SCO stance is a consensus that India too eventually comes to share. The draft memoranda adopted at Tashkent on Tuesday – with informal consultation and concurrence of the Indian government – commits New Delhi to mandatorily join the relevant conventions and internal documents that exist within the SCO framework.
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