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SCO reforms aim to make bloc more efficient — secretary-general

"It should be emphasized that the basic principles underlying the organization have proven their soundness and viability," Zhang Ming noted

BEIJING, November 10./TASS/. Reforming the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) is aimed at making it more efficient, it is not about a fundamental restructuring, SCO Secretary-General Zhang Ming said in an interview with TASS on Thursday.

"We are not talking about any drastic restructuring of the SCO, but rather our task is to make optimal adjustments to the SCO executive mechanisms to further improve its overall efficiency," the secretary-general said.

"It should be emphasized that the basic principles underlying the organization have proven their soundness and viability," Zhang Ming noted. It is due to these principles that the SCO's influence has been consistently growing, and it has been steadily becoming more attractive in the international arena, drawing more countries into the organization.

Among the key aspects of the proposed reforms, is updating the mechanism of interaction in the fight against international terrorism, extremism, separatism, international drug trafficking, cross-border organized crime, as well as the mechanism of ensuring international information security, Zhang Ming specified.

The SCO is an international organization founded in 2001. It currently includes Russia, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, China, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Four other countries - Afghanistan, Belarus, Iran and Mongolia - have observer status. In addition, nine countries are dialogue partners: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Egypt, Nepal, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Sri Lanka.

At the SCO summit in Samarkand on September 15-16, its leaders signed a memorandum on Iran's commitments in connection with the SCO accession bid, after which Iran will fulfill its obligations and complete the formal accession procedure. Also, the summit began the process of formalizing the membership of Belarus. In addition, it was decided in Samarkand to start the procedure of granting the dialogue partner status to Bahrain, Kuwait, the Maldives, Myanmar and the United Arab Emirates.

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