Islamabad, Pakistan: Pakistan and India are expected to get full memberships of Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) during next Summit to be held in Astana from June 9, 201, reports Dispatch News Desk (DND) news agency.
Pakistan and India are enjoying the status of observers of SCO and their full memberships were scheduled to be announced during last Summit held in Tashkent. However, their full memberships were halted on technical ground of memorandum of obligation and it was deiced that both countries would sign memorandum of obligation before next Summit.
Diplomatic circles in Islamabad are confident that Pakistan would get full membership during Astana Summit.
It may be mentioned that Pakistan applied for full membership in 2006 and Russia endorsed request of Pakistan in 2011.
China also expressed support for Pakistan during 2014 Summit.
Full membership of Pakistan was approved by the SCO in July 2015 in Ufa Russia. China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan are full members of SCO while official languages of SCO are Chinese and Russian.
Pakistan signed a memorandum of obligations on 24 June 2016 at Tashkent to join SCO to join as a full-fledged member.
Now it is expected that Pakistan would be given full membership provided it fulfill obligations of SCO by June 8, 2017.
Diplomatic circles believe that memorandum of obligation include that no member state would have territorial disputes with any other member state. It may be mentioned that Kashmir is a territorial dispute between Pakistan and India and this issue is important for other SCO states before placing both countries as full members of the organisation.
Diplomatic circles are of the view that Kazakhstan that is hosting next Summit is supporting Pakistan to embark as full member.
