Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Tuesday hailed the role of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in promoting regional prosperity and stability, and proposed to further develop the bloc.
Here are the key points Wang made in his remarks delivered at a SCO foreign ministers' meeting in the Uzbek capital.
-- During the course of development, the SCO has seen fruitful results in various fields, deepening neighborly-friendship and win-win cooperation among peoples in the region.
-- The SCO has become a paradigm of global and regional cooperation with great vitality and significant influence, and serves as a model of efficient cooperation by paying equal attention simultaneously to economic development and security cooperation.
-- SCO countries should proceed with confidence, solve problems with vision and innovative thoughts, and strengthen the implementation of political consensus in order to promote the development of the SCO with effective methods and efficient collaboration.
-- Members should take strict measures to prevent the infiltration of extreme terrorist forces, build network sovereignty awareness, curb drug overflow and play an active role in promoting stability and security in Afghanistan.
-- China stands ready to strengthen policy coordination and alignment of development strategies with other members, based on the joint construction of the Silk Road Economic Belt.
-- The inclusion of more members into the SCO demonstrates the vitality of the organization and its bright future, marking that the SCO is stepping into a maturer new stage. China is in favor of gradually enlarging SCO's membership on the basis of consensus.
-- People-to-people links and mutual understanding should be cemented. China has taken the lead in establishing institutions such as the China-SCO Environmental Protection Center and a committee for good-neighborliness, along with initiating other plans.
-- SCO member states should seize the timing of the group's 15th anniversary since its establishment, to carry forward the "Shanghai Spirit," push for the growth and strengthening of the group, and ensure the SCO move forward in steady and concrete steps, so as to better benefit the region and its people.
Founded in 2001, the SCO now has China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan as its full members, with Afghanistan, Belarus, India, Iran, Mongolia and Pakistan as observers, and Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Turkey as dialogue partners.
