*BEIJING – China will seek to bolster the fight against extremism at aregional security summit this weekend with some of its closest diplomaticallies, including Russian President Vladimir Putin.*
Jointly led by Russia and China, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation(SCO) was launched in 2001 to combat radical Islam and other securityconcerns in their own countries and across Central Asia.
It added two new members, India and Pakistan, last year and Iran has beenknocking at the door. Tehran is currently an observer rather than a fullmember of a bloc that also includes four ex-Soviet Central Asian republics.
“One of the pressing tasks facing the SCO is to continue fighting againstmilitants of the Islamic State who, following the extremist group’s defeatin Syria and Iraq, have returned to their native countries, some of whichare SCO members or observers,” China’s official Xinhua news agency saidthis week.
Member countries have destroyed more than 500 training bases for armedmilitants and arrested some 2,000 members of “international terroristorganizations” between 2013 and 2017, it said.
China says it faces a threat from Islamist militants in its far westernregion of Xinjiang, where hundreds have been killed in unrest in recentyears.
China has long found a sympathetic audience from Russia and Central Asiancountries for its security crackdown, although Western nations haveexpressed concern about rights abuses, charges China denies.
The Saturday-Sunday summit in the northern Chinese port city of Qingdaocomes ahead of an historic planned meeting next week between North Koreanleader Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump in Singapore.
Kremlin foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters this week theKorean peninsula would be discussed between Putin and Chinese President XiJinping, who meet first in Beijing on Friday, although he gave no details.
Underscoring China’s close ties with Russia, Xi is likely to award Putinthe country’s first friendship medal.
Xinhua said Xi will give out the medal on Friday afternoon at the GreatHall of the People, and while it did not name the recipient the timecoincides with Xi’s formal talks with Putin in the same venue.
The attendance of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani also offers China andRussia an opportunity to reaffirm their commitment to the Iran nucleardeal. Trump withdrew the United States from the 2015 deal last month.
However, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said they didnot want Iran overshadowing the summit.
“We hope all parties focus on the theme of the summit,” she said.
Serious disagreement among members remains, even if it is usually hiddenfrom view behind diplomatic language on which everyone can agree, such aswhat China calls the “three evil forces of terrorism, separatism andextremism”.
India and Pakistan remain deeply suspicious of each other, and China haslong held off from strong public backing for Russia over Ukraine.
“The traditional hostility between India and Pakistan could affect theefficiency of the SCO’s decision-making process,” Sun Zhuangzhi, head ofthe SCO Research Centre affiliated to the Chinese Academy of SocialSciences, wrote in the official China Daily.