India, Pak to Become Members of Shanghai Cooperation Organisation

India and Pakistan’s admission to the China-backed Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) will be formalised at the grouping’s summit in Kazakhstan next week, China said on Thursday June 01,2017

“The members states of the SCO are accelerating the MoU procedures with the two countries and everything is going very well,” foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said.

“We hope India and Pakistan as the full members at the Astana summit on June 8-9,2017 

We also expect the Astana summit will complete the admission procedures for the two countries," Hua told 

The political and security grouping—headquartered in Beijing,China —was founded in 2001 and comprises Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, besides China as full members. It is mainly aimed at military cooperation between the members and involves intelligence- sharing, counter-terrorism operations in Central Asia. Afghanistan, Belarus, India, Iran, Mongolia and Pakistan have observer status.