Iran Wants SCO to Consolidate Security in Region

(FNA)- Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Ali Shamkhani in a meeting with his counterparts from the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Moscow on Wednesday expressed the hope that closer cooperation among the SCO member-states will result in the consolidation of international and regional security.

Shamkhani arrived in the Russian capital on Monday to attend the 10th meeting of the SCO's top security officials. Iran, along with four other countries, currently holds an observer status in the organization, but senior Russian and Chinese officials have voiced enthusiasm to speed up the process for Iran to become a full permanent member in very near future.

Shamkhani, who is also the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei's representative at the SNSC, in his speech at the SCO conference underlined that Iran has close relations with SCO member-states.

During his trip to Moscow, Shamkhani will confer with his Russian counterpart Nikolai Patrushev on the latest political and regional developments.

In his address to the SCO meeting, the Iranian official expressed Tehran's approaches towards political and security developments in the region, as well as the necessity for adopting joint strategies in fight against terrorism, extremism, and violence.

The SCO representatives discussed reinforcing member-states in the security fields, fighting extremism and terrorism as well as drug trafficking.

Meantime, Shamkhani is to hold separate meetings with a number of his counterparts from participating countries.

Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan as the SCO member states and the representatives of the supervising states including Afghanistan, India, Iran, Mongolia and Pakistan have attended the event to confer mainly on security and regional developments.

The SCO is an intergovernmental organization which seeks to strengthen mutual trust and good-neighborliness between the member countries; facilitate their effective cooperation in political, trade-economic, scientific-technical and cultural areas as well as in education, energy, transport, tourism, environmental protection; joint maintenance of peace, security and stability in the region; towards the creation of a democratic, just and rational international political and economic order.

It was founded in 2001 in Shanghai by the leaders of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.

A senior Russian official announced in March that his country throws its weight behind Iran’s membership at the SCO.

"The SCO will benefit from the full membership of Iran," Russian Presidential Envoy to Afghanistan Zamir Nabiyevich Kabulov said.

Kabulov also expressed the hope that during the upcoming SCO summit in his country serious political decisions would be made to start the admission process of Iran.

Russia says it will host the next summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in the city of Ufa in July 2015.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in February that the criteria for adding new members to the SCO were approved during the 2014 summit in Tajikistan and that more applications for membership will be reviewed.