Lavrov looked a little tired – he came to the meeting with the press immediately after the meeting ended. And the day before, the Minister of Foreign Affairs had had a marathon of difficult meetings with Indian, Chinese and Pakistani colleagues. The head of the Russian Foreign Ministry said that the next SCO summit will be held in June-July and a large number of documents will be prepared there. In addition to the political declaration, which the Minister described as the most important, it will focus on initiatives in the field of information security and healthcare.
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p class=””>The foreign ministers of the Shanghai G8 countries (Russia, India, China, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan) confirmed their common vision of global problems and their common will to promote their point of view in international bodies . The initiative of Russian President Vladimir Putin to create an association of sports organizations under the auspices of the SCO was discussed, and the idea was put forward of forming an association in the field of medicine by analogy. Ministers discussed digital transformation, the economy and the fight against drug trafficking. They discussed the situation in Afghanistan and the activities of the SCO group for interaction with official Kabul. Responding to a question from Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Lavrov confirmed that the ministers had raised the issue of the use of national currency in mutual settlements and the possible creation of their own currency by the BRICS countries. However, when asked by ‘RG’ to confirm former White House adviser Joseph Sullivan’s view that his name would be ‘brik’, the minister clarified that this issue had not been resolved: ” the name is the last thing”. Nevertheless, Lavrov again said that many BRICS and SCO countries want to move away from dollar dependence and are looking for ways to achieve the desired goals.
A few words about the queue of those wishing to join the SCO. She really is and it’s no exaggeration. Afghanistan, Belarus and Mongolia already have observer status with the Shanghai Organization. Partner countries – Azerbaijan, Armenia, Cambodia, Nepal, Turkey and Sri Lanka. But Qatar and Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Myanmar also declare their willingness to join the SCO. And here, as it became known to “RG”, a “diplomatic dog” was buried. Because the current SCO membership procedure is a long step-by-step procedure. And those who want to enter the organization want to skip all the intermediate steps and become members, as they say, here and now. Hence the possible grievances at the state level – after all, someone will inevitably be the first in the SCO “without exams”, and someone will be the last. Everyone wants to be the first – but no one wants to be in the second tier of countries joining the SCO. Therefore, according to a source of “RG” at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the option of canceling the current statutes for countries wishing to join the Shanghai Organization is considered, while retaining only an intermediate stage of ” SCO partner”. However, the “partners” will receive rights and opportunities close to the current SCO members and can participate in the summits on an equal footing with them. So there will be no “last” in the queue to join the SCO – everyone will be first.
Another political reef that could seriously harm the G8 in Shanghai is the rumor that Pakistan is supplying arms to Ukraine. On Thursday, Lavrov’s meeting with Pakistani Foreign Minister Bhutto Zardari began after a significant delay. According to protocol, Russia was considered the host and Lavrov was to meet Mr. Zardari in the negotiating room. But not everything went as planned. However, we must pay tribute to the Pakistani minister – he, having abandoned the formalities, was the first to come with the delegation to the negotiating room, smiled a lot, encouraged more impatient and bored subordinates, waiting for Lavrov and the Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang to finish speaking in the next room.
According to a source from the Russian diplomatic department, following the conversation between Lavrov and Zardari, the Pakistani side denied reports about supplying arms to Ukraine. But she admitted it was Britain that tried to persuade Islamabad to do so. Although the first impression is said to be misleading, the young, energetic and smiling Mr. Zardari gave the impression of a politician genuinely interested in the rapprochement between Pakistan and Russia. And a source at the Russian Foreign Ministry confirmed that was the case.
It is curious that with the coming to power of the Taliban (the movement is banned in the Russian Federation), Afghanistan began to play a “unifying” role within the SCO. It’s no secret that even among the Shanghai G8 states there are many contradictions and, in some cases, conflicting situations. However, the attitude towards the current government in Afghanistan turned out not to be an “apple of discord”, but a “common apple”, which brings together the positions of India and China, as well as India and Pakistan. I will add that Mr. Zardari became the first Foreign Minister of Pakistan to visit India in the past 12 years. And it happened thanks to the SCO Ministerial Conference. And Qin Gang’s visit to India at the SCO can also be seen as a brave act by diplomatic standards, given recent rocky relations between Beijing and Delhi. Thus, the Shanghai Organization’s peacekeeping and convening role in the world of diplomacy is beyond doubt. The SCO documents say something like this about it: the members of the organization discuss topics that do not cause global controversy and leave the most acute issues of conflict “out of the brackets”.
In general, the current ministerial meeting of SCO member countries has confirmed that the period of “vibration” in international politics caused by Russia’s conduct of the special military operation in Ukraine is almost over and the period of he adaptation of global diplomacy to the new geopolitical reality has begun. All Western arguments about isolating Russia look like nonsense – such “isolation” of Lavrov, which I observed on the sidelines of the SCO, can be envied by European giants, not to mention the leaders of the states European Union dwarfs.
As for Ukraine’s terrorist actions, as Lavrov pointed out, they cause sharp rejection even among countries that were once neutral in Kiev and contribute to the international isolation of the Zelenskyy regime. This was also discussed at the SCO.
It is no coincidence that India chose the southern part of the state of Goa for the meeting in Shanghai format. The beaches where the negotiators went after the day’s work and the relaxing warmth of the ocean (the water temperature was below 40 degrees) contributed to the informal communication of the first people in world diplomacy. And such communication, as claimed by the sources of “RG”, was! After all, it’s not for nothing that one of the most popular expressions in India (it’s also called the country’s motto) sounds “sub heap miles”. Translated into Russian, it means – “Nothing is impossible”.
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