Seven prime ministers, including those of China and Russia, will attend a two-day meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Council of Prime Ministers in Islamabad next week, Pakistan’s foreign ministry confirmed on Saturday.
The event will be attended by the prime ministers of Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, as well as the first vice president of Iran and the foreign minister of India.
Special guests will be the prime minister of the SCO observer country, Mongolia, and the deputy prime minister of Turkmenistan.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, as the current chairman of the SCO CHG, will chair the 23rd Heads of Government (CHG) meeting on October 15-16. Bilateral meetings with invited leaders are also planned for the summit.
“At the meeting of the CHG, existing cooperation in the fields of economy, trade, environmental protection and socio-cultural relations will be reviewed,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced. “The heads of state and government also make institutional decisions in order to strengthen relations between member states.”
It was the first major regional conference organized by Pakistan in recent years, which resulted in increased security in the capital.
The central government has declared a three-day holiday in Islamabad and Rawalpindi following the death of two Chinese engineers in the Karachi terror attack.The high-level visit shows that SCO members are not vulnerable to attack.With the exception of India, where representation is at the ministerial level, all other states are represented by the Prime Minister or the Vice President.The SCO was founded in 2001 by China, Russia and Central Asian countries and aims to promote regional stability and cooperation. India, Pakistan and Iran were accepted as full members and Afghanistan, Belarus and Mongolia as observers.
