India's inclusion will aid SCO's potential: Chinese thinktank

Calling for joint efforts by India and China to fight terrorism, especially threats posed by the radical Islam, a Chinese thinktank today said India's membership of the SCO will enable the security grouping realise its potential.
"It is high time for both (India and China) to try more concerted efforts in multilateral security forum" an article published in state-run Global Times today said.
"For instance, a joint work is urgently required for their joint efforts to fight terrorism, especially the threats posed by radical Islam and drug trafficking from neighbouring Afghanistan. The latter is a neighbour of nearly all the countries in the SCO," said the article written by Tsinghua University researcher Xie Chao.

India and Pakistan were admitted to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation at the recent Ufa summit in Russia. China is an influential member in six-member grouping.
Dismissing theories that China was not keen on India's inclusion into the SCO, the article said, "it is politically unwise to keep India out and push it toward other groups, especially given India's increasing role in global affairs. Its accession will allow the SCO to fully release its potential in refreshing and reframing the pattern of relations among major powers."
The article played down concerns that admissions of India and Pakistan could make the SCO dysfunctional like the SAARC grouping, saying that "while this is a reasonable concern, such a worry is overstressed."

"There is no record of India bringing bilateral issues to multilateral forums. As a matter of fact, it is in its interest to keep the issues in the region rather than drag in outside powers," it said without referring to Pakistan, which has tried to take rivalry with India to multilateral forums.

Also "SCO focuses on multilateral rather than bilateral regimes. Its missions involve issues where all members are commonly challenged," it said.
"Actually, when we are speculating that China might have accommodated some of India's concerns, we must admit that it is not an easy step for a proud nation as India to enter an international organisation led, or co-led by China, since this is a gesture to acknowledge China's influence on global affairs," it said.

It said: "The SCO will provide another platform for China to discuss its relations with India when both are finding a range of issues of common interests, together with all other members in the bloc. Actually history has proven that they can cooperate very well in a bunch of multilateral framework."
About reports of China's reservations over India's entry into SCO, it said "if this were the trading that the theory is talking about, it would be the worst deal a state can ever make and certainly it is unfair to expect China would do so.
"It was a political decision for China to accept more powers into the bloc since the expansion is unavoidable. All in all, an open SCO is better than a closed one.