SCO capacities can help promote peace in region, entire world: Iran

Iran's interim president says the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) has the capacities to promote sustainable peace in the region and beyond.

Mohammad Mokhber made the remarks on Thursday in an address to the 24th Meeting of the Council of Heads of State of the SCO in Astana, Kazakhstan.

He called on the SCO members to enhance their transit, commercial and banking relations and move towards ditching the US dollar in their economic transactions.

“There are many opportunities and capacities in the territory of the member countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation in the field of trade, production, energy, transportation, agriculture, customs, telecommunications, as well as the development of technology in the field of artificial intelligence, for interaction, which should be used for the benefit of the welfare of nations and consolidation of sustainable peace and inclusive development in the Shanghai region and around the world," Mokhber said.

He also noted that the activation of transit corridors plays a key role in facilitating trade and economic development.

All the SCO members, he added, can trade with other countries faster and cheaper than before through the International North–South Transport Corridor (INSTC) and the southern Iranian ports.

The interim president further offered the creation of a joint network of free zones, as well as preferential and free trade agreements within the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

He also emphasized that Iran supports the use of national currencies in multilateral transactions with the aim of reducing reliance on the US dollar or ditching it.

The establishment of an SCO joint bank can improve the level of financial and economic cooperation among the organization’s members, Mokhber said.

Iran strongly opposes the use of political tools, especially unilateral sanctions in the energy sector, and actively cooperates in the drafting process of a document on the energy cooperation strategy of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

The SCO is one of the world’s largest regional organizations, accounting for around one-third of global Gross domestic product (GDP), roughly 40 percent of the world’s population, and nearly two-thirds of the entire Eurasian landmass.

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SCO should take ‘effective measures’ to end Israel’s Gaza genocide

Additionally in his remarks, Mokhber underlined the need for effective measures by the world’s countries, especially by the SCO members, to immediately stop Israel’s war crimes in the Gaza Strip and send humanitarian aid to the besieged Palestinian territory.

“We strongly condemn the continuation of brutal, organised crimes by the Zionist Regime" is committing against the resistant and oppressed people of Gaza with the "support of the United States," he said, noting that the Israeli atrocities have "stunned" the world amid the inaction of international organizations.

Israel unleashed a genocidal war on the Gaza Strip on October 7 after Hamas carried out its historic operation against the occupying entity in retaliation for the regime’s intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.

So far, the Tel Aviv regime has killed more than 37,953 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured over 87,266 others.

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