Iran Preparing Documents to Join Shanghai Cooperation Organization: Envoy
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Iranian Ambassador to Russia Kazem Jalali said Tehran is preparing the necessary documents to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).
"The process of obtaining full membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization consists of numerous stages that a candidate country needs to implement within the established time frame," Jalali said in an interview with TASS.
"According to the schedule, Iran is preparing documents, passing through these stages and notifying the Shanghai Cooperation Organization on a regular basis," the envoy added.
The ambassador’s comments came as a report in the Chinese state-run daily Global Times, citing Iran's embassy in Beijing, said that Iran's accession to the full membership of the Euroasia-spanning organization will be finalized by April 2023, after signing its first memorandum of obligations at this year's summit, to be held in Samarkand in September.
The Eurasian political, economic, and security alliance was formed in 2001 by Russia, China, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan at a summit held in Shanghai.
China, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan, India, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan are its current full members. Iran, Afghanistan, Belarus, and Mongolia are observer states.
The organization accounts for 40 percent of the world's population and 28 percent of the global gross domestic product (GDP).
Earlier, Russian media outlet Sputnik reported that Iran is slated to join the SCO as a full member state this year, citing a foreign ministry statement of the organization's rotating chair Uzbekistan.
Iran first applied for membership in the alliance 15 years ago. The approval of Iran’s candidacy came at a summit in the Tajik capital of Dushanbe last September.
Following the announcement, Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi said in an address to the summit that the world had entered a new era when hegemony and unilateralism were declining.
