The process for the accession of India and Pakistan to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) will be officially launched at the regional security grouping's summit to be held in the Russian city of Ufa next month, a senior official said.
"I believe the process will kick-start in Ufa," SCO Secretary General Dmitry Mezentsev told media at a meeting of the SCO Business Council Board in St Petersburg yesterday.
"First, a meeting of the foreign ministers' council took place in Moscow following very professional consecutive work at the floor of national coordinators and at this stage a draft agenda of the summit is presented, where this issue had been put on," he was quoted as saying by TASS news agency.
Mezentsev said that bids of India, Iran and Pakistan had been submitted earlier and now these countries are SCO full-fledged observers.
India and Pakistan are likely to be granted full membership of the China-backed grouping at the July 9-10 summit, scheduled to be attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
India had formally applied for membership of SCO in its summit meeting in Dushanbe last year, saying it was ready to step up engagement with the grouping.
SCO was founded at a summit in Shanghai in 2001 by the Presidents of Russia, China, Kyrgyzistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
India, Iran and Pakistan were admitted as observers at the 2005 Astana Summit.
Mezentsev said that "the country bidding for full-fledged membership should meet the requirements prescribed in all documents of the organisation, including in the SCO Charters."
"But along with this, the country that is granted with the right to join the SCO has to become a signatory under the organisation's 27 regulations, part of which has a status of national law for SCO member countries."
Mezentsev noted certain restrictions for Iran's possible accession to the SCO.
"In the SCO legal framework there is a provision that a status of a full-fledged member envisages that the country should comply with a number of regulatory acts, in particular the country should not be under the UN Security Council's sanctions," he said.
"It is clear that any country aspiring for the SCO membership should take into consideration a whole package of requirements the SCO demands from its new members."
"But at the same time we suppose that the organisation's attitude to the bids will be worded at the Ufa summit," the SCO secretary general added.
On June 3, foreign ministers from the SCO member countries held a Council's meeting after which a joint statement was issued saying, "a decision to launch a procedure of India's and Pakistan's accession to the SCO as member countries will be crucially important.
