MOSCOW – The People’s Republic of China welcomes Saudi Arabia’s accession to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) as a dialogue partner, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said at a press conference.
China is ready to intensify cooperation with Saudi Arabia within the framework of the SCO in order to increase the contribution to maintaining peace and stability in the Middle East region, as well as promote common development, Mao Ning said.
As RAPSI previously reported, the Council of Ministers of Saudi Arabia approved a memorandum on the status of the country as a dialogue partner with the SCO.
The SCO is an international organization founded in 2001 by the leaders of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. India and Pakistan joined the organization in 2016.
Afghanistan, Belarus, Iran and Mongolia have the status of observer states in the SCO, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Egypt, Cambodia, Qatar, Nepal, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Sri Lanka are partners.
In 2021, at a meeting of the Council of Heads of State of the SCO Member States in Dushanbe, the process of raising the status of Iran in the Organization to the level of a member state was launched; in 2022, at the Samarkand SCO Summit, a similar procedure was launched in relation to Belarus.
Dialogue partnership memorandums with Egypt, Qatar and Saudi Arabia were signed in September 2022.
Source: Rapsi News
