India will invite Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan along with other leaders for the annual meeting of council of heads of government of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) later this year, officials said.

For the first time, India will host the annual meeting of the council of heads of government of the SCO, the bloc’s Secretary General Vladimir Norov said.

Ministry of external affairs spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said all eight member countries, four observers and dialogue partners of the grouping will be invited for the meeting.

“The meeting is held annually at the prime minister’s level and it discusses the SCO’s programme and multilateral economic and trade cooperation,” he said.

“As per the established practice and procedure within the SCO, all eight members of the SCO, as well as four observer states and other international dialogue partners will be invited to attend the meeting,” Kumar said when asked whether Pakistan Prime Minister Khan will be sent an invitation for the meeting.

What is the SCO?

The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) is an intergovernmental organisation founded in Shanghai on June 15, 2001. It was founded by the presidents of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

These countries, except for Uzbekistan, had been members of the Shanghai Five group, formed on April 26, 1996 with the signing of the Treaty on Deepening Military Trust in Border Regions.

The SCO Charter was signed during the St Petersburg heads of state meeting in June 2002 and entered into force on September 19, 2003. This is the fundamental statutory document which outlines the organisation’s goals and principles, as well as its structure and core activities.

Who are the SCO members?

The SCO currently comprises eight member states (China, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan), four observer states interested in acceding to full membership (Afghanistan, Belarus, Iran and Mongolia) and six dialogue partners (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Turkey).

India, Iran and Pakistan were admitted as observers at the 2005 summit. On June 9, 2017, at the historic summit in Astana, India and Pakistan officially joined the SCO as full-fledged members.

The SCO has two permanent bodies - the SCO Secretariat in Beijing and  Executive

Committee of the Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure (RATS) in Tashkent. The

chairmanship of the SCO is by rotation for a year by the member states.

The SCO’s main goals are…

* Strengthening mutual trust and neighbourliness among the member states.

* Promoting their effective cooperation in politics, trade, economy, research, technology, culture, education, energy, transport, tourism, environmental protection and other areas.

* Making joint efforts to maintain and ensure peace, security and stability in the region.

* Moving towards the establishment of a democratic, fair and rational new international political and economic order.

The SCO has established relations with the UN in 2004 (where it is an observer in the General Assembly), Commonwealth of Independent States in 2005, ASEAN in 2005, the Collective Security Treaty Organisation in 2007, the Economic Cooperation Organisation in 2007, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime in 2011, the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia in 2014, the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific in 2015 and the UNESCO in 2018.

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