Rossiiskaya Gazeta: “The Shanghai Hour”
Pier Sidibe
"The big Eurasian Six" redraws the continent's geopolitical structure
The financial crisis that broke out in the West has revealed flaws in the world financial architecture. In this context, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation is not going to sit on its hands, but will work to create a multi-polar world. This was the main outcome of yesterday's meeting of the SCO heads of government in Astana.
A high-ranking source in the Russian delegation assured this paper that Pakistan, considered to be one of America's main allies, would soon join the SCO. At present, this influential regional structure includes Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. India, Iran, Mongolia and Pakistan have observer status in the SCO.
On Thursday, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin met his Shanghai colleagues and hastened to reassure them that the financial crisis has highlighted the flaws of monopoly in world finance and the policy of economic egoism, meaning that the SCO has an excellent chance to strengthen its grip on the region. Vladimir Putin couched the proposal carefully: "The world has entered a very important transitional period in its development, with its main content being the formation of a multi-polar financial and economic system and consequently, the strengthening of the multi-polar architecture of international relations as a whole."
Competition in the world is increasingly centered around values and development models, the Russian Prime Minister said. In his opinion, a qualitatively new geopolitical situation was emerging, with new centres of economic growth and political influence rapidly growing. "Joint efforts are needed to complete the transformation of global and regional security and development architecture quickly, adapting them to the new realities of the 21st century, when stability and prosperity are becoming indivisible," Mr Putin said.
The solution of world problems, the Russian Prime Minister argued, should be part of the national development strategies. Of course, we should work towards peace together, but we should not forget our own ambitions. "Russia intends to contribute to changing the global financial architecture that can truly ensure stability and prosperity in the world, and ensure progress," Mr Putin said.
He was not the only one to speak about Russia's important role in the region. Most participants, including the Prime Ministers of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Mongolia, spoke nothing but Russian when they discussed the challenges facing the SCO, putting the Chinese Prime Minister in a strange kind of isolation, as China is recognized to be the main driving force of the SCO. Not that Wen Jiabao found it to be a hindrance; on the contrary, he readily backed Vladimir Putin's rhetoric. In the opinion of the Chinese Prime Minister, the financial collapse was one more proof of the "inevitability of reforming the international monetary system". To this, the Mongolian Prime Minister, Sanjin Bayar, responded by saying that it would not be a bad idea to create a stabilisation fund to support SCO members and observers. The Prime Minister of Kazakhstan, Karim Masimov, called on the SCO to hold an early meeting of Finance Ministers and the heads of central banks in Alma Ata in order to "derive lessons and draw conclusions from the current situation".
Crisis or no crisis, trade has to be developed. The participants paid great attention to economic cooperation. They agreed to monitor the movement of energy resources together. Mr Masimov even suggested creating a common energy market and a common SCO transport corridor. The appearance of a "Western China - Western Europe" corridor would solve the problem of cargo transportation in three main directions: China-Kazakhstan, China-Central Asia, China-Russia-Western Europe, the Kazakh Premier said. "The implementation of that project could be our practical contribution to the process of involving SCO member states in the world transit network," Mr Masimov believes. By the way, Kazakhstan initiated the development of an Asian SCO energy strategy at the 2006 summit.
There is still a long way to go in the practical implementation of these ideas, while abandoning the dollar in mutual trade within the SCO is already a possibility. In the opinion of Vladimir Dmitriyev, the head of Vnesheconombank and the SCO Interbank Association, "there is an interest in switching to settlements in national currencies or rather, scaling down settlements in dollars, especially in light of the embargo on the activities of certain companies, such as Rosoboronexport."
As for the Russian economy, Mr Dmitriyev had this to say: "Vnesheconombank expects to receive 5 billion roubles from the Finance Ministry every day, and to use it to support the financial market. Vnesheconombank has already "consumed" about 20 billion roubles to work with shares and 5 billion roubles for transactions with the bonds of Russian blue-chip issuers. "Our plans are roughly similar: to consistently use the assets of the National Welfare Fund in order to diversify it and support the Russian financial market," Vladimir Dmitriyev noted.
The plight of labour migrants was a separate theme. Vladimir Putin urged his SCO colleagues to prevent the global economic problems from spreading to social aspects, including the position of labour migrants. "The representative from Tajikistan has rightly pointed out that migrants working in other countries, including members of our Organisation, could face challenges in connection with the problems in the global economy. Of course, we must be ready for that and should work on it even now. We cannot allow for any social or economic problems to arise in connection with the processes taking place in the world financial system," Mr Putin said, and went on to lay out guidelines for how the problem should be solved. He said it was necessary to seek "both to form an effective system to counteract illegal migration and to create conditions for legal migration". He suggested that creating a special task force could be instrumental in practical cooperation on migration issues.
All-Russia issue
