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By Geeta Mohan: The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Council of Foreign Ministers’ meeting kicked off in Goa today, where delegations from member states will take stock of the preparations for the Leaders’ Summit in July this year. There will be an exchange of opinions and discussions focussed on reforms and modernisation, sources said.
“The most important work before the SCO Foreign Ministers will be to assess the status of decisions that will be approved at the SCO Summit in New Delhi in July. The meeting will also give an opportunity to discuss the state of multilateral cooperation in SCO, regional and global issues of interest, reform and modernization of the Organization and the progress of admitting Iran and Belarus to the SCO as new Member States,” said Dammu Ravi, Secretary (ER) in the Ministry of External Affairs, during an interaction with the press at the Taj Exotica in Goa on Thursday.
While there would be no joint statement at the conclusion of the conference, there are 15 decisions that have been shortlisted for the Leaders’ summit and those corresponding decisions will be signed by the ministers at the end of the deliberations on May 5.
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One of the key points of this forum is the inclusion of four new countries as dialogue partners – Kuwait, UAE, Myanmar and The Maldives. Sources say that the Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs) for their inclusion are under consideration. If the process is completed, they will be inducted as dialogue partners. To a question on full member status for Iran and Belarus, officials said that the final decision rests with the leaders.
India is also going to push the SCO forum to add English as an official language. Official sources said, “That has been India’s focus right from the beginning. There is a common consensus that eventually it will become one of the official languages.”
Since becoming a full member of the SCO in 2017, India has been nudging the bloc to add English as an official language for communication. The first such proposal was placed in 2020, necessitated by the inclusion of India and Pakistan as full members of a grouping that has had only Russian and Mandarin as the official and working languages of the bloc founded by Russia, China and four Central Asian nations where the Russian language is widely used.
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To a question about whether India will raise the issue of terrorism emanating from Pakistan, sources said that specific issues will not be discussed. The SCO has a regional security architecture called SCO-RATS (Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure) where these issues are discussed at length. The sources added that as part of policy and under the SCO charter, “bilateral” issues are not discussed in the forum.
Another major issue that is being discussed at this meeting is a proposal for the settlement of mutual trade and national currencies. Sources said it is in the process and a decision has not happened yet. “There is no common currency that we are discussing. Mutual settlement of trade in national currencies,” they said. This could help Russia greatly to circumvent the Western sanctions over its war in Ukraine.
In the first half of the day today, External Affairs Minister Dr S Jaishankar held talks with SCO Secretary General Zhang Ming. The emphasis was on strengthening the SCO. Ming spoke about India’s great civilisation and what the country brings to the table. The Secretary General also lauded the role that India played, the sources added.
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