UFA - India dan Pakistan ikut bergabung dalam grup keamanan regional baru yang dipimpin Rusia dan China. Munculnya kelompok keamanan baru itu menjadi bukti bahwa Rusia tidak bisa diisolasi Barat.
 
Bergabungnya India dan Pakistan itu terjadi setelah dua hari digelarnya KTT Organisasi Kerjasama Shanghai (SCO) di Kota Ufa, Rusia. India dan Pakistan dikenal sebagai negara yang masing-masing memiliki nuklir.
 
”Evolusi SCO berlangsung pada tahap yang rumit dalam pengembangan hubungan internasional dan di tengah-tengah munculnya multi-kutub dunia,” kata SCO, dalam sebuah pernyataan. 
 
”Proses ini disertai dengan meningkatnya tantangan keamanan dan ancaman, meningkatkan ketidakpastian dan ketidakstabilan di berbagai wilayah di dunia.”
 
Anggota SCO juga mencakup negara-negara wilayah Asia Tengah bekas Soviet, seperti Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan dan Tajikistan.
 
Presiden Rusia, Vladimir Putin, melihat bahwa SCO bisa disatukan dengan BRICS, kelompok negara gabungan dari Brasil, India, Afrika Selatan, Cina dan Rusia. Kelompok BRICS sepakat untuk menjaga stablitas ekonomi semua anggotanya.
 
Perdana Menteri India, Narendra Modi, memuji ekspansi SCO yang harus menjadi salah satu organisasi yang paling dinamis di dunia. ”Waktunya telah tiba untuk menjangkau seluruh wilayah,” kata Modi. ”Kami memiliki semua yang kita butuhkan untuk berhasil.”
 
Perdana Menteri Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif, juga memuji pembentukan kelompok baru ini.”Upaya Presiden Putin akan meningkatkan lingkup politik dan ekonomi dari sabuk Eurasia,” katanya, seperti dikutip Reuters, Sabtu (11/7/2015).

source: http://international.sindonews.com/r...aru-1436605157

source: http://international.sindonews.com/r...aru-1436605157

India, Pakistan to work together in SCO but differences remain

UFA (RUSSIA): As India and Pakistan warmed up to each other, the bonhomie spilled over to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit where both the countries were accepted as full members of the Central Asian security group dominated by Russia and China.

PM Narendra Modi met his counterpart Nawaz Sharif in the morning and later joined him at the summit. In his address, Modi congratulated Pakistan for its elevation to full membership. Both India and Pakistan were Observers with the group until now.

In fact, as top sources accompanying Modi to Ufa, said, SCO could provide a real platform to? India and Pakistan to work together over security issues in the region. Sharif and Modi attended the SCO summit as the process to induct the two countries as full members was slated to begin here.

Speaking at the SCO plenary session, Modi said India will contribute to advancing peace and friendship in the region.

"We will work with SCO to combat terrorism and extremism that is a rising threat to the entire region. A stable and peaceful Afghanistan is a future that the Afghan people richly deserve, but it will also advance peace, stability and prosperity in the region," he said.

?In his speech, Sharif called for regional stability and economic integration to achieve the objectives of peace and development. Sharif said SCO provided a useful forum to Pakistan in promoting peace and stability in South Asia and Afghanis?tan.

While India continues to nurse serious reservations over the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, Sharif? said the corridor was going to be useful for the prosperity of the region.

"The development of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor is linked with the prosperity of our neighbourhood. Among others, the Corridor envisions construction of roads, railways, and important energy projects," he said. Modi had reiterated India's concerns over the Corridor only a day earlier in his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Sharif said Chinese President Xi Jinping's 'One Belt-One Road' initiative was a pioneering effort. "This blueprint of grand regional connectivity entails massive infrastructure and energy resource development, with unparalleled economic dividends for our future societies," he said.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/i...w/48027137.cms

The new Eastern Bloc: China, Russia and India are joining forces

This month, as Newsweek goes to print, an international organisation all but unknown in
the West is set to announce that its membership will soon include countries representing half
the world's population. If the hopes of its leading backers – particularly Russia – are realised, the 15th annual summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in the Russian city of Ufa will mark the moment when this previously obscure body starts to demand much closer attention from the West.

The SCO's plan is to invite India and Pakistan to apply formally to take their place alongside Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan as full members.

The idea behind these invitations is to extend the SCO's reach south across the Asian landmass, bolstering its claim that it is a counterbalance to the Western-dominated international institutions that have held sway since the end of the Second World War. But if the imminent expansion of the SCO signals a major step on the road to a "multi-polar" world order, then it is a journey that promises to be long and arduous, with ample opportunity for fellow travellers to go their separate ways.


Over the past few years, the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has repeatedly vented his frustration at Turkey's lack of progress in joining the European Union by raising the prospect of joining the SCO instead. During a visit to Russia in 2013, Erdoğan is reported to have said: "If we get into the SCO, we will say goodbye to the European Union. [The SCO] is better – much more powerful. Pakistan wants in. India wants in as well. If the SCO wants us, all of us will become members of this organisation." To date, no invitation has been forthcoming for Turkey, in spite of warm words in public between Erdoğan and Russian president Vladimir Putin. At a time of instability on Turkey's southern border and growing uncertainty about Putin's intentions, however, Erdoğan's threats bolster the apparent credibility of the SCO even if they are yet to be taken seriously at the highest levels.

The SCO started life, in 1996, as the "Shanghai Five", formed in the aftermath of the Soviet Union's break-up to enable Russia, China and the three former Soviet states in Central Asia that share a border with China (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan) to resolve their various territorial disputes. Having succeeded in this effort to ensure stability in Central Asia, the "Five" became six in 2001, with the addition of Uzbekistan, and changed their name to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. The job of secretary-general to the organisation is shared between the members in rotating three-year terms – the Russian governor of Irkutsk Oblast, Dmitry Mezentsev, who did not respond to Newsweek's requests for an interview, is the present incumbent – although the SCO's permanent headquarters are in Beijing.

The focus during the organisation's early years was on regional security, conceived of in the Chinese formulation of countering "terrorism, separatism and extremism" – for example, the threat Beijing identified from its Uighur population in the western province of Xinjiang, which borders the former Soviet states. Since 2004, SCO members have run a "Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure", based in the Uzbek capital of Tashkent, which assembles security and intelligence staff from its members and promotes closer co-operation through shared blacklists and enhanced extradition procedures for terror suspects.

http://europe.newsweek.com/new-easte...-forces-329968