A student of the Bashkir State Pedagogical University, Gulnur Zinnatova, won the 25th International Intercollegiate Beauty Contest of Grace and Artistic Skills, which took place in the framework of the international festival ‘Student Spring of the BRICS and SCO countries.’ As planned by the organizers, it should serve to strengthen good neighborly relations and the development of cultural and diplomatic relations between the BRICS and SCO countries. While the youth beheld beauty, the adults summed up the results of the Tashkent SCO summit, held at the end of last week, the main event of which became the memoranda relating to the order and terms of admission to the SCO of India and Pakistan.
The Special Representative of the Russian President for SCO Affairs, Bakhtiyer Khakimov, said that the proposals to cooperate with the SCO were received at a different time. ‘’The desire of every state to join with a higher status is natural. The originality of the SCO structure is that an observer in the SCO has a higher status than a dialogue partner. In other international organizations the realities are constructed differently. For example, an ASEAN dialogue partner is a main partner. The SCO has such a practice, when the observers are entitled to participate in the meetings of the Council of Heads of State and Heads of Government, as well as in the working of various mechanisms."
The Dialogue Partnership in the SCO has an applied and practical character and entails a connection to specific areas of cooperation – security, economy, transportation, agriculture. The number of observers may not exceed the number of members of the SCO, or the practical work may be compromised. "We're not looking for a numerical expansion, we need to establish more effective practical cooperation. Therefore, we were asked to think about how to move to the membership through partnership dialogue. We have considered the applications of Armenia and Azerbaijan for receiving observer status, but after consideration we appealed to Baku and Yerevan to consider the possibility of starting with the status of partner in dialogue."
At the previous SCO summit in Ufa it was considered possible to raise the status of Belarus, which had proved itself to be a good dialogue partner. Therefore, President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko took part in the first plenary session of the Tashkent Council of Heads of State. "This is an example of how to move from one status to another, and to receive additional opportunities to work," Khakimov said.
