MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti political commentator Dmitry Kosyrev) -- Scheduled for July 5-6, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit, which will be attended by six leaders, is destined to be quite an event. The reason: a change of regime in Kyrgyzstan and an uprising suppressed in the Uzbek town of Andijan.
Both countries are SCO members, together with Russia, China, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan, and the events were particularly significant given that one of the SCO's declared objectives is to maintain regional stability and security.
The outside world often fails to see what is really taking place in Central Asia, as indeed is the case in many other regions. Many people beyond the region's borders still seem to entertain the feeling that in the wake of the revolutionary toppling of Kyrgyzstan's president, Askar Akayev, the people who assumed power are not very compatible with their Central Asian neighbors, Russia and China. Attempts have been made to compare Kyrgyzstan with, say, Ukraine, where last year's shake-up did indeed lead to as yet unsuccessful attempts to alter foreign and domestic policy.
But in Kyrgyzstan the opposite is true. Akayev was skeptical of SCO, whereas its new leadership is more neighbor-friendly than the previous one. In their every-day rhetoric the new authorities are targeting Akayev's lack of economic progress, who at the same time allowed full democracy at home. And the Uzbek leadership, too, once very skeptical of regional cooperation with its neighbors, China and Russia, has also changed its mind.
And in general, the developments in Kyrgyzstan and in Uzbekistan have brought together not only the political elites, but also the middle classes of these Central Asian republics, which in local conditions usually fall early prey to "revolutionary" crowds, as Kyrgyzstan has demonstrated.
The Europeans and Americans, too, made mistakes and showed their inexperience in regional affairs. They were taken aback by uncontrolled events in Kyrgyzstan, and refused to back Uzbek President Islam Karimov who forcibly (or heavy-handedly) crushed developments in his country similar to Kyrgyzstan's. This double mistake only pushed the region's countries closer towards each other.
It is a different matter that in such a situation the SCO, as an organization and a mechanism, is expected to provide clear responses to challenges to stability, rather than engage in declaration mongering. Will the summit live up to these expectations?
In principle, it has been clear what will happen at the summit, since the SCO foreign ministers met in June, also in Astana. Some measures on stability and security will be highlighted, if in general form, in a document called The Concept of Cooperation in the Fight Against Terrorism, Separatism and Extremism. These measures also include a provision, to be approved by the summit, on permanent representatives of SCO countries to the common information and coordination center in Tashkent, known as the Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure, and much else.
It is very important that developments in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan have brought home to this organization that its task is not to maintain existing regimes by military force, building ever-new military bases. The SCO was conceived, as is now apparent, to assist the independent and open development of Central Asian countries - and, certainly, to protect this development from threats.
So the summit's main challenge will perhaps be to ensure that people come to accept that the SCO can be useful for the region's future development.
For example, the Kyrgyz leadership, which is facing a presidential election four days after the summit, clearly suggested an early announcement of at least five to six pilot economic projects from a vast long list of those discussed. And Kazak Foreign Minister Kasymzhumart Tokayev bluntly told the previous Astana meeting that an economic plan that had been adopted earlier was not working. Formally, SCO economic cooperation should be discussed at an upcoming prime ministerial summit in Moscow in September, rather than at the current one. But accelerating economic plans is now the best of all possible policies.
Most important among such projects are those connected with Kyrgyz and Tajik power plants (No.1 and No.2 Kambaratin hydro schemes, the Naryn cascades, etc.). The region needs a full-fledged electric power market for future development. It is important at least to mention these projects to everybody in the SCO.
In terms of investment, more money is flowing into Russia, China and Central Asia countries. Three neighboring countries that are due to get official observer status in the SCO - India, Iran, and Pakistan - also have their investment plans.
But investment projects, apart from electric power, also require trade routes. It would be desirable to see progress on such projects as highways to Kashgar (China), Afghanistan (the Vakhan corridor) and many others. This is because SCO's ideology is one of developing the region and making it open to the world rather than creating an exclusive economic grouping.
At the current stage, states establishing business infrastructure should play the leading role. This arrangement fits in well with the present business structure in all six countries where the state plays a sufficiently great role. It ought to be noted, however, that China, which has had no dealings with Central Asia for centuries, does not have the requisite experience, and Russia has lost some of its own that it amassed when Central Asia was part of the Soviet Union. But then the summit is being held to help solve many of these problems.
