Aleksandr Lukin, the Director of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation Centre at Moscow State University of Foreign Relations, commented to Russia Today on the SCO aims, activities and future development.

Russia Today: Can you tell us more about the aims of this organisation and what's being done to meet them?

Aleksandr Lukin: SCO was created as a result of the process of border negotiations between the former republics of the Soviet Union and China. But later it developed into an regional organisation which promotes co-operation in, I would say, three fields: security, economic co-operation and cultural co-operation. This is a regional type organisation and it has gained a lot of support lately and became quite an influential group.

RT: Would you say it is effective?

A.L.: It is mostly effective in the security field, it is a little bit less effective in the economical co-operation and cultural co-operation is developing recently but we all want the development process to be faster.

RT: What would you say is the future of the SCO?

A.L.: I think it has a good niche because after the collapse of the Soviet Union, I would say there was an expectation in the world, as I put it once, to have an organisation where working languages, like in SCO, according to the charter are Russian and Chinese and there is no English, I am sorry for speaking that about English. So, it has a kind of room for development and many countries in the world expected and would like it to be a strong organization. But whether it catches this chance, it is still too early to say now.

RT: What does it depend upon?

A.L.: It depends on many factors. There are many problems that should be solved. There are differences in the level of development of different countries. Some of them are more developed like Russia, China, Kazakhstan, others are less developed. There are also, I would say, bureaucratic problems for example and a long history of distrust between several countries, for example Russia and China. Now Russia and China are developing co-operation in the security sphere and even in the sphere of intelligence and things like that. It was quite unimaginable just 10 years ago. So it is going rather smoothly but I think the process can be faster.