President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev addressed the session of the Council of Heads of State of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), held in videoconference format. He expressed gratitude to the Russian leadership, personally to Vladimir Putin, for organizing this event. Taking the opportunity, he congratulated President of Tajikistan Emomali Rahmon on his convincing victory in the recent presidential elections.
The President of Kazakhstan noted that the coronavirus pandemic did not allow meeting in person, but this in no way diminishes the importance of the summit.
Over 20 years, Tokayev stressed, the SCO has become one of the most successful international organizations and is rightfully regarded as an effective tool for strengthening cooperation and trust in an area covering a quarter of the planet's territory, 40 percent of the world's population and a third of the world's GDP.
"The situation in the SCO's responsibility area is complicated… The coronavirus has become a tough test for the world community, has clearly shown all the flaws in international cooperation. The pandemic aggravated the crisis of trust between global powers. Existing mechanisms of preventive diplomacy and conflict settlement suffered a serious failure," Tokayev continued.
He indicated that security threats are growing, including terrorism, arms race, various kinds of hybrid wars, and climate change. In the field of geoeconomics, there is a clash of two polar trends: globalism and nationalism.
According to the UN, Tokayev stressed, the global economic decline by the end of 2020 will reach 4.4%. International tourist flows will decrease by almost 70%, and direct investment flows will fall to 40%.
In these conditions, he went on to say, the SCO has to find ways to adapt to difficult realities in our citizens’ interests. He expressed belief that the Shanghai spirit and experience will ultimately help address this problem.
"Kazakhstan considers it fundamentally important that common efforts be directed towards achieving a noble goal -"everything for the people." I see this as a guarantee of strengthening our collective immunity in the face of pandemic and other global challenges," Tokayev said. According to the President of Kazakhstan, the SCO had succeeded in coordinating efforts to fight the negative consequences of the pandemic. Mutual humanitarian assistance and direction of epidemiological specialists helped stabilize the situation in our countries. Kazakhstan expresses gratitude to the respective countries, including Russia and China, for active and productive cooperation on this global problem, he said.
“Kazakhstan supports the announcement of the anniversary year for our organization as the Year of SCO Culture,” Tokayev said, adding that the escalation of the global arms race necessitates the launch a control system over biological weapons.
He reminded that at the 75th UN General Assembly session, he proposed to establish an international agency on biological safety and that he counted on the SCO support in this matter.
According to him, growing protectionism and severing of international supply chains make it an urgent task to unlock the economic potential of the SCO.
“We hope that the approval of the Action Plan for the implementation of the SCO Development Strategy through to 2025 will contribute to the restoration and expansion of mutual trade. This requires acceleration of negotiations on creation of a financing mechanism for project activities. He believes it important to ensure the synergy of national infrastructure development programs of the SCO member states and observers and expressed readiness to work together to agree and sign the SCO roads development programme.
“The connecting link in our common efforts is undoubtedly the Belt and Road megaproject. Kazakhstan will make due efforts to jointly implement infrastructure and logistics projects, which will benefit both our economy and, of course, the economies of our partners,” he said. Tokayev called on the SCO leaders for closer interaction to address common problems and strengthen the "Shanghai spirit".
“I wish our Tajik friends a successful presidency in the SCO,” he concluded.
By Ekaterina Eliseeva for the Kazakhstanskaya Pravda.
