BEIJING, May 22. /TASS/. Afghanistan is a major source of terrorist threat for the countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, Secretary of Russia’s Security Council Nikolai Patrushev said on Tuesday.

"For the SCO member-states the threat of terrorism and extremism comes first and foremost from Afghanistan’s territory. We are convinced that any unilateral attempts to solve the situation in the Islamic republic by force bypassing the norms and principles of the international law may only worsen the situation and create additional security risks," Patrushev said.

According to Patrushev, Russia jointly with other member-states of the organization has been calling for restoring peace and stability in Afghanistan through political settlement led by Afghan citizens.

The Tashkent conference on Afghanistan on March 26-27 confirmed the need to step up multilateral cooperation, including in the SCO framework. We view this meeting, and also meetings in the framework of the Kabul process as a logical continuation of consultations as part of the Moscow format and the SCO-Afghanistan contact group," Patrushev said.

Any initiatives on the Afghan track should take into account the interests of regional states and rule out the prospects of imposing unacceptable scenarios on them. "In this context, we support the Chinese side’s proposal to hold the second meeting of the contact group in Beijing," he said.

The Declaration on the Establishment of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization was inked in China’s Shanghai in June 2001 by six founding states - Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. On June 9, 2017 India and Pakistan became full-fledged members of the SCO. Afghanistan, Belarus, Iran and Mongolia currently enjoy observer status while Sri Lanka, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Cambodia and Nepal are dialogue partners.