Belarus is ready to offer its industrial potential and peacekeeping practices to its partners in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, Belarusian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Aleinik said at the meeting of the Foreign Ministers Council of the SCO member states in Astana, Kazakhstan on 21 May, BelTA has learned. “Belarus has consistently passed all the stages of becoming a member of the SCO: first as a dialogue partner, then as an observer, and, finally, it is finalizing the procedure of registration its full membership. We strive to be active in all dimensions of the organization's work: political and diplomatic, trade and economic, cultural and humanitarian. Once it becomes a full-fledged part of the Shanghai family, Belarus is ready to offer its partners its industrial, scientific, transit potential, accumulated experience in peacekeeping and multilateral diplomacy,” Sergei Aleinik said.

According to him, Belarus’ priorities in the SCO include building up effective cooperation to strengthen regional security. “We are ready to contribute to the work of interaction mechanisms through the heads of security councils, ministers of defense, Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure (RATS), to participate in the establishment of rules and activities of new structures, which were discussed today: an anti-drug center in Tajikistan, a center to counter organized crime in Kyrgyzstan, a center for information security in Kazakhstan, a universal center to combat challenges and threats on the basis of RATS),” the minister said. “International organizations and individual military and political mechanisms have failed to prevent fragmentation and degradation of the regional security system, and directly provoked them in the case of the Euro-Atlantic space. To find solutions to these problems, Belarus held a high-level international conference Eurasian Security: Reality and Prospects in a Transforming World in October 2023. Representatives of many SCO countries contributed to the success of this event. The discussions confirmed the demand for the Belarusian initiative to create a platform to discuss in an open and inclusive manner the issues of forming a fair, safe and sustainable architecture of international relations in the Eurasian space,” the Belarusian minister of foreign affairs said. Building on the successful outcome of last year's meeting, Belarus plans to hold another international conference on Eurasian security in Minsk in late October-early November 2024. “I am confident that the new security concept supported by the SCO deserves to be discussed and promoted, including on the Minsk platform,” Sergei Aleinik said. “As a full member of the SCO, Belarus will look forward to intensifying economic interaction. We are ready to join the programs of economic cooperation, the work of the Business Forum, the formats of meetings of the ministers of industry, energy, the SCO Alliance of Special Economic Zones. We will actively participate in the development of the investment fund, the Investors Association, the pool of technoparks and innovation clusters, strengthen cooperation within the framework of the Interbank Association, promote digitalization and ICT, mutual settlements, transport corridors, and other economic initiatives,’ the diplomat stressed.