India refrains from endorsing China’s One Belt, One Road initiative in Samarkand Declaration

New Delhi, September16

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India once again refrained from reaffirming support for China’s One Belt, One Road (OBOR) initiative in the Joint Declaration issued after the Samarkand summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation held on Friday.

While six members — Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan acknowledged the ongoing work, including efforts to link the construction of the Eurasian Economic Union and OBOR, India stayed out of endorsing Beijing’s flagship project.

However, all the eight members endorsed the need to develop common principles and approaches to form a unified list of terrorist, separatist and extremist organisations whose activities are prohibited on the territories of the SCO member states. They also stressed the importance of “consistent implementation” of SCO’s 2022-2024 Programme of Cooperation in countering terrorism, separatism and extremism. This formulation meets India’s stance that there should be no double standards on terrorism and the world must unitedly crack down on all forms of terrorism.

Significantly, the 121-point Samarkand Declaration that covered every conceivable topic, said Central Asia is the core of SCO and advocated further strengthening the role of SCO in enhancing stability and socio-economic development in the region.

The Summit saw Bahrain, the Maldives, Kuwait, UAE and Myanmar being given the status of SCO dialogue partners. MoUs for granting the SCO dialogue partner status to Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Qatar was also inked. The expansion, said the Joint Statement, will enhance SCO’s role as a multilateral mechanism for addressing topical contemporary issues, ensuring security, stability and sustainable development in the region. The application of Iran as a full member was also accepted.

In defence, they stressed the importance of holding regular joint military counter-terrorism command and staff exercises to enhance cooperation in combating armed formations of international terrorist organisations.

They also supported the establishment of Afghanistan as an independent, neutral, united, democratic and peaceful state, free of terrorism, war and drugs.

The SCO also spoke against the climate agenda being used to introduce measures restricting trade and investment cooperation.