SCO Secretary General about upcoming Qingdao summit

The upcoming summit in Qingdao will go down in the history of the organization as the first meeting of the ‘Shanghai Eight’ countries, SCO Secretary General Rashid Alimov said.

"The event will usher in a new stage of the SCO’s development. I believe that this phase will be marked by the SCO’s growing role and importance in global affairs," TASS cited him as saying.

Between the 2017 summit in Astana and the upcoming summit in Qingdao, the SCO covered a rather long distance. "As a result, around 20 documents have been put on the agenda of the forthcoming meeting of the Council of Heads of State, which concern almost all regional and global issues – from the uncompromising war on terror and extremism to the expansion of cooperation in the areas of the economy, trade and environmental protection," Alimov noted.

The Qingdao Declaration will be the summit’s main final political document. "This important document will include SCO member states’ consolidated assessments of the current regional and global situation, and will also clarify the SCO’s approaches to resolving pressing regional and global issues, as well as define major areas of the organization’s activities for the near future," he added.

"Being a comprehensive document, it will reflect all the global political patterns the SCO has been focused on. As the saying goes, let us wait and see," Alimov stressed.

The summit will be held on June 9-10.