Many SCO countries provided assistance to Afghan people last year: Zhang Ming

Beijing: Secretary-General Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Zhang Ming said that in the past year, many SCO-member states had provided various kinds of support and assistance to the Afghan people by helping them survive the winter, solve food security problems, and help reconstruction efforts.

“There are also some countries that have begun to promote cooperation in fields such as interconnected transportation and others with Afghanistan,” he told CGTN about SCO role in helping the region’s reconstruction and development. He opined that these efforts would be beneficial to the goal of making Afghanistan a constructive factor in the region.

Responding to a question about role of the SCO in achieving peace and reconciliation in Afghanistan, he said that since its establishment, the SCO had attached great importance to properly handling the Afghan issue. “It can be said that once the Afghan issue is resolved, the long-term stability of the region can be largely resolved.

Therefore, in the past 21 years, the SCO has always paid great attention and attached great importance to the Afghan issue, and made various efforts to mediate and resolve the Afghan issue. And they were fruitful efforts,” he added.

The secretary general opined that after 21 years of development, the region had maintained a peaceful, safe and stable situation, which had a lot to do with the existence of the SCO. “On the Afghanistan issue, our member states have a consensus, and we look forward to Afghanistan becoming an independent, peaceful, neutral, and democratic country,” he added.

He said, the SCO look forward to the establishment of Afghanistan as a peaceful country without terrorism and drugs. In short, the SCO would make its efforts to this end.

To turn a country like Afghanistan into a constructive factor for regional peace, security and development, I think this is our goal, he added.

It may be mentioned here that Afghanistan is one of the four observer countries of the SCO Shanghai Cooperation Organization.