NEW DELHI: Members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) have expressed their displeasure over India’s announcement to have the SCO Summit in a virtual format.
"We were looking forward to having our leaders meet in person. Since December 2022 we were gearing up for the event and stopped in our tracks when the announcement to host the event virtually was made in May,’’ said a representative of an SCO country.
The summit would not just have given an opportunity for the leaders of the SCO countries to meet in person, but also facilitated bilateral talks for which the SCO member nations were gearing up.
India took the chairmanship of the SCO from Uzbekistan after the conclusion of the SCO Summit in Samarkand in September 2022.
After hosting nearly most of the 134 meetings in person, on May 30th it was announced by the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) that the Summit would be held virtually on July 4th.
" India has been too consumed by the G20 Presidency and the events revolving around it, as a result of which the events under the SCO chairmanship have been lost. The only time SCO came into prominence briefly was during the SCO Foreign Ministers meet in Goa,’’ lamented a member of the SCO.
The SCO grouping is by no means insignificant if one was to consider the geographic scope and population.
" It is the world’s largest regional organisation in terms of covering approximately 60 per cent of the area of Eurasia and 40 per cent of the world population with a combined GDP of 20 per cent of the global GDP. So it is only natural for us to have expected it to be more visible,’’ added another member of the SCO.
The members of the SCO include India, Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Pakistan. Iran is likely to become a member this year. The SCO also has dialogue partners that include Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Turkey. Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Egypt are also expected to be dialogue partners.
So, while India will go ahead with hosting the SCO Summit virtually on July 4th, the members of this group say that they hope the significance of this grouping is not diluted in future summits.
