SCO could expand to include pakistan & india

from app: The six-member Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) could be enlarged in near future to include Pakistan,India,Iran and Mongolia to help strengthen regional security and ensure greater economic development and progress.

At a discussion arranged at the International Institute of Strategic Studies on “The Shanghai Co-operation Organisation and Sino-Russian Strategic Rapprochement” on Thursday afternoon, the two international affairs experts Oksana Antonenko and Roger McDermott discussed both the economic and military aspects of the organisation and called for a stronger European Union-SCO links.

Antonenko who is a senior fellow and Programme Director for Russia and Eurasia at the IISS and has written extensively on security issues in Russia and Central Asia, said SCO remains a key organisation with whom EU must engage.

The SCO includes Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Russia and China as full members and Iran, India, Pakistan and Mongolia as observers.