The EU should not ignore the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation By Oksana Antonenko ★ The Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO), which brings together China, Russia and four Central Asian states, is becoming an important regional club. It serves as a platform for counterterrorism co-operation and encourages economic ties between its member-states. ★ The EU’s new Central Asia strategy should make a case for stronger EU-SCO links. By working with the SCO, the EU could help stabilise Central Asia, improve its energy security and strengthen its efforts to fight terrorism and drug-trafficking. ★ However, one constraint on closer EU-SCO ties is that some European governments see the SCO as anti-western, and many criticise its members for serious human rights violations. Introduction The German presidency of the European Union has made a priority of enhancing Euro p e ’s relations with Central Asia. It hopes that the June European Council will adopt the EU’s first ever comprehensive strategy towards the region. Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the German foreign minister, said in December 2006 that Europe had three strategic interests in Central Asia: first, its proximity to an unstable region that includes Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran; second, the region’s struggle – so far successfully – to contain Islamic fundamentalism; and third, Central Asia’s vast energy re s o u rces. He is right that these intere s t s should lead the EU, until recently a marginal player in the region, to pay greater attention to it. However, if the EU wants to enhance its role in the region, it should engage not only with Central Asian states themselves, but also with the re g i o n a l organisations that share many of its concerns on s e c u r i t y, stability and development. The key organisation in the region is the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), which includes
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Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Russia and China as full members, and Iran, India, Pakistan and Mongolia as observers. Following the recent change of regime in gas-rich Turkmenistan, there is speculation that it could abandon its extreme form of neutrality and join the SCO in the near future. The SCO, though little known in Europe, has become a dynamic, influential and ambitious regional organisation, stretching across a large part of the Asian continent. In the five years of its existence, it has already become much more than a talking shop, spawning real results in areas such as security cooperation, common economic projects and the harmonisation of laws. In recent years, as western influence in Central Asia has declined, that of Russia and China has grown. This shift has made the SCO more important, as have several other factors: ★ Russia has distanced itself from both the EU and the US. Some Russian policy-makers favour a geostrategic shift towards closer relations with Asian countries.
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