Friday, 20 March 2009The U.S State Department confirmed on Thursday that it is sending a senior diplomat to a Moscow conference on Afghanistan next week of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). According to the State Department the Obama administration has accepted an invitation to attend a Russian-hosted conference on Afghanistan next week. Iran is also expected to participate. The conference will take place in Moscow on 27th March.
The SCO which was formed in 2001 is a regional group includes Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan and mainly concerns security and economic issues among its members. Along with Iran, India, Mongolia and Pakistan are observers. The SCO has been widely viewed as a vehicle aimed at countering U.S. influence in the region. On the other hand in 2005, the United States sought, but was denied observer status in the Shanghai group, which has been critical of U.S. military operations in Central Asia.
The United States is not a member of, nor an official observer to, the organization, but it is among several NATO and G-8 countries that were invited as guests, department spokesman Robert Wood told reporters. Iran is an observer and is expected to send a delegation. However Wood stressed that the US representative at the Moscow meeting, Deputy Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asian Affairs Patrick Moon, has no plans to meet the Iranian delegation. According to Wood, United States welcomes the opportunity to join Shanghai group members in a conversation about how to stabilize the Afghan situation.
"The reason why we think it's important to go to this conference is that it's about Afghanistan and how the international community can try to better the situation on the ground, better coordinate activities (and) see what types of things we can do together to help make things better for the people of Afghanistan," Wood said.
by Simge Soyer, JTW
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Friday, 20 March 2009
Journal of Turkish Weekly
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