BEIJING – Militaries of Pakistan and India will be part of a megaanti-terror drill in Russia next week, which is being organised by theShanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) with an aim to expand cooperationamong the member countries to deal with terrorism and extremism. Theexercise is scheduled to take place from August 20-29 at Chelyabinsk cityin west central Russia, official sources said here on Sunday.

About 300 servicemen from India and also around 100 Pakistani personnelwere the first to arrive in the Chelyabinsk Region. The exercise will bejoined by all SCO member countries including Russia, China, KyrgyzRepublic, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The drill peace missionwill take place nearly three months after the SCO in its annual summit inChinese city of Qingdao resolved to deepen cooperation among theirmilitaries to deal with threats of terrorism, extremism and separatism.

The broad objective of the exercise is to boost cooperation among the SCOcountries to deal with challenge of terrorism and extremism. On thesidelines of the exercise, military officials of the SCO countries arelikely to deliberate on ways to enhance cooperation to stop spread ofterrorist ideologies and eliminate factors and conditions that facilitateterrorism and extremism. Overall, the peace mission drills will involveover 3,000 troops and about 500 pieces of military hardware.

According to Indian media, it will be for the first time since independencethat Pakistan and India will both be part of a military exercise though thearmies of the two nations have worked together in UN peacekeeping missions.Pakistan and India were admitted as observers of the grouping in 2005 andthey were admitted as full members of the bloc last year.