SCO developing steadily, says Russian expert

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) has been developing steadily with tangible fruits observed in such areas as security and humanitarian cooperation, a Russian expert said. [Special coverage]

"If we look at the SCO as a whole, its advance is obvious," Sergei Lousianin, deputy director of Russia's Far East Institute, told Xinhua as an SCO summit is being held in Dushanbe, the Tajik capital.

Against the backdrop of the upcoming withdrawal of Western forces from Afghanistan, the SCO should further enhance security cooperation, said the expert.

He believes that the next step will be promoting the status of the Tashkent-based anti-terror agency of the SCO to give it anti-drug power.

Another thing that pulls SCO members closer is the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, Lousianin noted.

The common victory should not be celebrated only as a victory over German Nazism but also as a defeat of Japanese militarism, against which China had fought much longer, he said.

Meanwhile, the expert admitted that problems still exist within the organization, where mutual direct investment is not yet compatible with the scale of interaction in other fields.

The initiative of Chinese President Xi Jinping to establish the Silk Road Economic Belt could boost the SCO cooperation, he said.

Meanwhile, he said cooperation within the SCO organically corresponds with cooperation within the Eurasian Economic Union, which is set to be launched by Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia on Jan. 1, 2015.

"Eurasia is a common field for integration and cooperation," he said.