Key direction of SCO - security Central Asian region

Almaty. June 16. Kazakhstan Today - The President of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, stated at the session of the Council of the leaders of the SCO member states in Yekaterinburg - the key direction of SCO work is security in the Central Asian region, the agency reports citing official mass media.

"The key direction of SCO work is security and stability in the region. Afghanistan and Pakistan zone causes big concern," N. Nazarbayev said at the session.

The head of Kazakhstan expressed confidence that the accepted at the international conference, taken place in March in Moscow under the SCO aegis, plan of measures of the SCO member states and Afghanistan on struggle against terrorism, drug trafficking, and organized crime has become some kind of "a road map of our activities in the Afghani direction, which is advisable to conduct in coordination with other interested countries and organizations on Afghanistan."

N. Nazarbayev said that Kazakhstan, as the country that has voluntary refused its nuclear arsenal and the active participant of process of global disarmament, condemns nuclear tests carried out by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

"We are convinced that this step will have an extremely negative effect for the process of global non-proliferation and brings threat to security both in the regional and in the global scales," the President of Kazakhstan emphasized.

The session of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in the expanded structure is taking place in Yekaterinburg. The leaders of the SCO member countries are discussing security issues in the region, in particular, the situation in Afghanistan.

The President of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev, the President of Tajikistan, Emomali Rahmon, the President of Kyrgyzstan, Kurmanbek Bakiev, the President of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, the President of Uzbekistan, Islam Karimov, the chairman of the Peoples Republic of China, Hu Jintao, the SCO Secretary General, Bolat Nurgaliev, the Prime Minister of India, Manmohan Singh, First Vice Prime Minister of Mongolia, Norovyn Altanhuyag, the President of Iran, Mahmud Ahmadinezhad, the President of Pakistan, Asif Ali Zardari, Director of Executive Committee of SCO Regional Antiterrorist Structure, Myrzakan Subanov, are taking part in the session.

The President of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzay, will participate in the summit as a visitor.

The Yekaterinburg Declaration and the SCO Convention Against Terrorism are expected to be signed at the SCO summit.

SCO is a permanently operating regional international organization founded in June, 2001 by the leaders of Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Before all countries, except for Uzbekistan, were the participants of 'Shanghai Five'. India, Pakistan, Iran and Mongolia are the SCO observer countries.

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