SHANGHAI Cooperation Organisation (SCO) is an extension of “ Shanghai Five”, set up in 1996 comprising of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan and Tajikistan. Its objective was to resolve border disputes and terrorism. In June 2001 Shanghai Cooperation Organisation was established with the inclusion of Uzbekistan. Its member states take up 60 percent of Eurasia and a quarter of the world's population.

The SCO's mandate appears to be a firewall to the growing US influence in the Middle East, Central Asia and Eurasia. The fifth summit of the SCO held on June 15, where Russia and China sought to strengthen the SCO as a counterweight to Washington and a means to assert their strategic and economic interests.

Moscow and Beijing formed the SCO to counter US influence in resource rich and strategically sensitive Central Asia and justify the suppression of separatist movements in Chechnya and China's Xinjiang province. Washington has exploited its “war on terrorism” to occupy Afghanistan, establish US military bases in Central Asia, subjugate Iraq and menace Iran.

The SCO summit took place in the backdrop of the visit of Chinese President Hu Jintao to Washington in April this year and public rumpus between US Vice President Dick Cheney and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Last month US Vice President Cheney used a visit to former Soviet republics to accuse Russia of using energy as a tool of “intimidation and blackmail,” prodding a thinly obscure attack by Putin on the predatory character of US policies and a call for increased Russian defence spending.

The latest summit made clear that Russia and China have ambitious plans to wield a broader regional influence, using China's economic power and the large oil and gas reserves in Russia and Central Asia as levers. Iran, which has the second largest reserves of gas and fourth largest reserves of oil, would only add to the SCO's energy clout. Chinese officials described the summit as the most important diplomatic event of the year.

Chinese and Russian leaders welcomed Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad even as the Bush administration was pushing for tough UN measures against Tehran

over its alleged nuclear weapons programs. Iran, along with India, Pakistan, and Mongolia attended as observer. Afghanistan was invited as a “guest”.

Ahmadinejad appealed for mutual political and military support. He urged the SCO to become a strong institution able to “block threats and unlawful strong-armed interference from various countries. Russia and

China, however, are seeking to avoid an open confrontation with the US over Iran.

The US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld voiced Washington's displeasure at these developments of the Shanghai summit, declaring that the SCO should not have invited “one of the leading terrorist nations in the world” to a summit about fighting terrorism.

Interestingly, Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who is completely reliant on Washington for financial and military support, attended the summit and is seeking closer ties to the Shanghai grouping. Before leaving for China, he declared that Afghanistan “belongs to the region where SCO also lies. Afghanistan has no other ways, and can't be outside the region.” After the summit, he

travelled to Beijing and signed a “friendship” treaty with China to cooperate on the “war on terror”.

At the summit, Russian President Putin proposed the formation of “an SCO energy club,” cutting directly across US plans for dominance in the Middle East and Central Asia. He noted that SCO members and observers together hold over one fifth of the world's oil reserves and half its

natural gas. On the other hand, China, currently the world's second largest oil importer, has huge and growing demands for energy.

SCO secretary-general Zhang Deguang said the organisation would not become a military alliance. He told RIA Novosti, the organisation, “Is not an eastern equivalent of NATO. It will never become a military grouping because its charter envisages no

such status.” Putin also told journalists there was no comparison between the SCO and the former Soviet-led Warsaw bloc during the Cold War. Nevertheless, Russia and China support closer military and political, as well as economic, cooperation.

Chinese President Hu proposed negotiations toward a nonaggression treaty among the SCO

states that would preclude member states from engaging in activities that undermine the security, sovereignty and territorial integrality of others. Such a treaty could be used to block Washington's activities aimed at fomenting so-called colour revolutions to install pro-US regimes in Central Asia.

It is, however, the SCO's economic weapons that immediately concern Washington. The Bush administration has been seeking to forge a close strategic and economic alliance with India, as part of its broader plans to contain China. The prospect of obtaining guaranteed energy supplies as part of the SCO is also attractive to New Delhi, which has now attended consecutive summits as an observer.

Not surprisingly, the SCO summit provoked disquiet in Washington. In a comment on June 15, the Wall Street Journal declared that the group's “aggressive anti-American bent and growing political clout” was “cause for concern”. The article's main preoccupation was not with the SCO's potential as a military threat. It noted that an Eastern version of NATO was feasible, but would take time.

“It's the SCO's growing political weight that currently worries us. The grouping clearly has grand pretensions. Russian President Vladimir Putin dubbed it and influential regional organisation' in an article this week. The United Nations inaugurated an SCO secretariat in 2004, and SCO representatives have reached out to the [European] OSCE and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations,” the newspaper stated.

The article went on to question why “democratic” countries would join this “authoritarian” club. “Beyond energy interests - which admittedly are large - it's hard to see why New Delhi or Kabul would itch for closer political ties to the SCO, a grouping that, for instance, Belurussia dictator Alexander Lukashenko is itching to join.” In a parting warning shot to New Delhi, it added: “That's one more point for the US Congress to examine as it considers the recently negotiated US-India nuclear deal.”

The tones of the comment make clear that the US ruling class will not sit by and watch the growth of a Russian-Chinese bloc on the Eurasian, but will respond aggressively to break it up.

The author is a columnist and researcher.