By Richard Weitz
Why China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, & Uzbekistan have yet to take new members
For the first time in almost a decade, the annual Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) leadership summit decided to admit another formal observer, Afghanistan, to its ranks. The leaders attending the June 6-7 summit in Beijing also let Turkey join Belarus and Sri Lanka as a formal “dialogue partner”. Even so, the SCO has not fully overcome its expansion dilemma.
The SCO designated its first formal observer, Mongolia, in June 2004, after having finalized regulations on the observer status earlier that year. India, Iran, and Pakistan became observers at the 2005 summit in Shanghai. Other countries have since expressed interest in becoming formal observers. But the SCO has not yet moved forward in accepting new participants—until now.
Has the SCO finally broken its expansion impasse? Probably not—since the SCO again failed to promote any existing observer countries to full membership. Iran, India, and Pakistan lobbied hard for such status, but were again blocked, probably by host nation China, with no timetable when they might finally enter.
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