In a recent interview with news media ahead of the 2006 SCO summit, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Alekseyev said that since its coming into being in 2001, the SCO has adopted a series of legal documents which lay the legal basis for cooperation among its members.

Mongolia, Pakistan, Iran and India were granted observer status in 2004 and 2005, and more countries have expressed the hope for becoming SCO observers, he said. All these are a manifestation of the SCO's success.

Alekseyev said the SCO also attaches great importance to opening dialogue with other international organizations and maintains working contacts with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the Eurasian Economic Community, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation and UN agencies.

One of the most important tasks that the SCO has been facing is the joint combat against terrorism, separatism and extremism, Alekseyev said.

The SCO member countries have held joint anti-terrorism exercises in Kazakhstan and China, the Russian deputy foreign minister said. A similar military exercise is going to be staged in Russia next year, he added.

At the forthcoming SCO annual summit, which is scheduled for June 15 in Shanghai, a number of documents will be signed to strengthen anti-terror cooperation among SCO members, he said.

Nikolai Spassky, a deputy secretary of the Russian Security Council, told the Rossiiskaya Gazeta daily that the Asia-Pacific region enjoys the fastest economic growth in the world and the new trend of development is demonstrated most clearly in the region.

"If Russia wants to catch up with the trend, it must formulate a new comprehensive strategy oriented to the Asia-Pacific region," Spassky said.

To speed up the development in the Siberian and Far East region has been listed as one of the priorities of the Russian government, so the new strategy should be conducive to expanding economic and high-tech cooperation between Russia and the Asia-Pacific region, Spassky said.