NEW DELHI (Sputnik) — Moscow will make every effort to ensure India gets full membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) at the upcoming SCO summit in Russia's southern city of Ufa, the speaker of Russia's lower house of parliament said Friday.
16 December 2014, 20:09 GMT
"India is playing an active role in the SCO, but as an observer. Russia will take all the necessary steps to secure a positive decision on India's application for full membership at the Ufa summit," Sergei Naryshkin said after a meeting with the heads of both chambers of the Indian Parliament in New Delhi.
The SCO, a Eurasian political, economic and military alliance founded in 2001, currently comprises of Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. India, along with Mongolia, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan, has observer status.
On Friday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced that the matter of India and Pakistan's accession to the SCO would be high on the agenda at the organizations summit to be held in Ufa in July.
