China asks India, Pakistan to mend ties

BEIJING : China said on Thursday India and Pakistan should improve their ties and “uphold” the spirit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) after becoming members later this month.

India and Pakistan are slated to become members of the SCO, a regional security bloc led by Beijing, at the group’s summit in Astana in Kazakhstan later this month. This is the first time since its launch in 2001 it will expand its membership.

The group’s current members are China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.

“Hope India and Pakistan strictly follow the charter of the SCO and the idea of good neighbourliness, uphold the SCO spirit, improve their relations and inject new impetus to the development of the SCO,” foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said.

Hua was referring to the unease among SCO’s original members about the inclusion of the two because of the state of ties between India and Pakistan.

Observers here feel that after the inclusion of the two countries, the SCO could face a rocky diplomatic path ahead, given New Delhi and Islamabad’s hostilities over issues such as Kashmir, terrorism and the path to peace in Afghanistan.

“The hostility between the two states is unlikely to be dispelled in the short time. Together with their complicated relations with China and Russia, analysts believe their admission may have negative effects on the SCO, bringing more internal conflicts and lowering the level of mutual political trust and the efficiency of multilateral cooperation,” Sun Zhuangzhi, secretary-general of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences’ SCO Research Centre, wrote last year. There are positives as well. “The scope of the group will be expanded from China, Russia, and Central Asian countries to South Asia, covering over 60% of Eurasia. In addition, more opportunities will be brought to the SCO,” Sun wrote.

It was at the SCO summit in Ufa in Russia in 2015 that the founding members launched the process to accept the membership of India and Pakistan.