DUSHANBE, June 16, 2009, Asia-Plus  -- “We are engaged in strengthening of authority of our Organization through development of partnership with interested organizations and multilateral associations.  Today, we are also making decision on granting the dialogue partner status to Belarus and Sri Lanka,” Russian President Dmitry Medvedev remarked at a plenary session of a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Yekaterinburg today.

The SCO summit has been televised on the Russian TV Channel Vesti.

Russian president noted that those decisions would strengthen the Organization opportunities.  Medvedev also pointed to the necessity of speeding up work on elaborating the draft document that would determine the procedure of admission of new member nations to the SCO.

On the cooperation within the framework of the SCO, Russian leader noted that due to joint work, including implementation of joint projects, “we will be able to solve all those problems that currently face all the countries.”

“Today, it is very important to determine ways of developing new standards of regulation of financial markets and financial institutions,” Medvedev said.

He noted that the countries should think not only about overcoming the financial crisis but also about expansion of our ties, including in the energy sphere.

Medvedev noted that the sides had discussed issues related to food security as well as a number of economic projects, including increase in share of mutual accountings with use of national currencies.

In his statement, Russian President Medvedev, whose country holds the rotating SCO presidency, announced that Uzbekistan would assume the rotating SCO chairmanship.