Egypt and Qatar have been granted the status of dialogue partner of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) following the admission procedure launched in September 2021 at the Dushanbe summit, the Uzbek Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday.
“On September 14, 2022, in Tashkent, in preparation for the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a ceremony of signing memoranda on granting the status of the SCO dialogue partner to the Arab Republic of Egypt and the State of Qatar was held,” the ministry said in a statement.
The documents were signed by SCO Secretary General Zhang Ming, Egyptian Deputy Foreign Minister Hamdi Sanad Loza and Qatar’s State Minister for Foreign Affairs Soltan bin Saad Al-Muraikhi.
The SCO is an international organization founded by China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Russia and Uzbekistan in 2001. In 2017, India and Pakistan were also admitted to the organization. The SCO observer countries include Afghanistan, Belarus, Iran and Mongolia, while the partner countries are Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Turkey. In July, Belarus submitted its application to join the organization as a full-fledged member.
