#2
Asia Times
June 6, 2002
The St Petersburg summit: Good intentions
By Sergei Blagov

MOSCOW - Friday's Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) meeting will be the fifth summit in roughly two weeks for Russian President Vladimir Putin, following summits with the United States, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union and the pan-Asian summit in Almaty on confidence building. It is understood that by holding the SCO summit, the Kremlin not only wants to reinforce the Central Asian vector of its foreign policy, but also to strengthen the anti-terrorist agenda in the SCO course of action.

The fight against terrorism will be a "system-setting" element of the SCO, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko told journalists in Moscow on Wednesday.

The SCO, which includes Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan as well as China and Russia, holds its summit on Friday in St Petersburg. The summit is expected to approve the 30-page SCO Charter, a joint declaration and an agreement to establish an anti-terrorist center in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.

Furthermore, Moscow presumably has secured Beijing's backing in its drive to make the war on terror the SCO's priority. For instance, during a recent visit to Moscow, Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan stated that the SCO had to become not "a club for empty discussions but a viable institution capable of making an important contribution to the international war on terror".

According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, apart from the SCO Charter, the member states are to sign some 30 multilateral agreements designed to make the organization work.

The SCO is not a military alliance, but an open international organization, Putin stated in an interview released by the official Russian Information Agency (RIA) on Tuesday. Putin also said the SCO summit will have "historical significance".

In January, foreign ministers of the SCO met in Beijing and agreed to set up "mechanisms for emergency anti-terrorist response". After the January SCO meeting, Chinese President Jiang Zemin urged the setting-up as soon as possible of "a regional anti-terrorism mechanism".

A perceived threat of Islamic separatism has been a matter of concern for Beijing, notably due to outbreaks of unrest among the Muslim Uighur minority - a Turkic-speaking group in China's westernmost Xinjiang region that borders Central Asia, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Russia has long advocated collective security action to deal with perceived threats in Central Asia. In 1997, Russia and China signed a treaty along with the former Soviet states of Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan on significant reduction of border troop numbers. These nations that now share the former Soviet-Chinese border became known as "Shanghai Five".

A transformation took place at the fifth annual summit of the Shanghai Five in China last June 14-15. The summit announced that the group had become a new international body, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, or SCO. The six leaders (the group now also included Uzbekistan) also signed the Shanghai Convention to Combat Terrorism, Separatism and Extremism, which is supposed to be a basis for subsequent deal on a joint anti-terrorism center in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan.

Furthermore, the SCO has mulled expanded membership, something that Russian officials have said Moscow has not ruled out. So far there are no new applications to join the SCO, though Mongolia, Iran reportedly might consider such a move.

Putin has said that in the wake of the Soviet collapse and Russia's withdrawal from Central Asia, "a sort of power vacuum" has emerged in the region, so joint efforts, notably by the SCO member states, are needed to control the situation there.

However, after presumed rapprochement between Russia and the West, notably NATO, there has been a talk of reduced cordiality in relations between Moscow and Beijing. Subsequently, the Russian leader lost no opportunity to reassure China.

Moreover, in the interview released by RIA on Tuesday, Putin stated that Russia was not going "underestimate China's significance" in world affairs. The Russian leader also confirmed Moscow's intention to develop a "strategic partnership" with China.

Jiang is scheduled to hold bilateral talks with Putin on Friday. Among other things, Putin and Jiang are to discuss tensions between India and Pakistan, RIA reported on Wednesday.

At the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) summit in Almaty on Tuesday, Putin pressed India and Pakistan to have a direct meeting to prevent the Kashmir conflict from exploding into a war. The effort failed to bring Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf together for face-to-face talks. Subsequently, on Wednesday Putin stated in Moscow that he "did not intend" to arrange direct talks between Vajpayee and Musharraf, since such a meeting might be premature and "counterproductive".

Presumably, Putin's attempt to mediate in the standoff between India and Pakistan was intended to demonstrate that Russia is still relevant internationally. However, the lack of practical results not only came as a blow to Russia's diplomatic efforts, but also raised questions on whether new groupings such as the SCO or CICA can really make a difference in terms of strengthening Asian security.

Nonetheless, it has been understood that both Russia and China share concern over Central Asian volatility. Yet it remains to be seen whether the SCO or its anti-terrorist body can in fact fill a perceived "vacuum" and address security concerns in Central Asia.

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