DUSHANBE (AFP) — Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Chinese President Hu Jintao joined Central Asian leaders Thursday in the Tajik capital for a summit overshadowed by Moscow's stand-off with the West.
The leaders of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan met as the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), a regional group set up in 2001 to counter NATO influence in the strategic Central Asia region.
"The main agenda will be ensuring stability and security in the SCO area. There will be a focus on counterterrorism, drugs and transnational crime from Afghanistan," a Kremlin official said before the talks.
"There are also questions of socio-economic cooperation, particularly in the sectors of energy, transport, trade, finance, information technologies and agriculture, on the agenda," the Kremlin official said.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were also due to attend the talks. The leaders of Afghanistan, Iran and Tajikistan will meet later on Thursday for a meeting of Persian-speaking countries.
But talks were expected to be dominated by Russia's stand-off with the West following a brief armed conflict with Georgia earlier this month and Medvedev's move on Tuesday to recognise the independence of two Georgian rebel provinces.
"Of course we're going to discuss it. That doesn't mean we're going to force people to recognise" the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Kremlin spokeswoman Natalya Timakova told reporters ahead of the meeting.
Medvedev has called on other countries to recognise the two separatist provinces. No other country has so far done so and the leaders of the Group of Seven wealthy nations on Wednesday condemned Moscow's move.
China and ex-Soviet Central Asian countries have taken a cautious line, wary of harming relations with Western partners.
China on Wednesday said it was "concerned" and called for "dialogue and consultation" to resolve the issue.
Medvedev met Hu in Dushanbe on the eve of the summit and informed him of the situation in Georgia but did not appear to have obtained any guarantees of support from China against the avalanche of Western criticism.
US President George W. Bush has called on Medvedev to reverse his decision to recognise Abkhazia and South Ossetia, saying it exacerbates regional tensions. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner warned it could lead to war.
Russia has reacted angrily to Western criticism, saying that it fails to recognise that Moscow only began an armed conflict to repel a Georgian attack against South Ossetia, where tens of thousands of Russian citizens live.
Russia on Wednesday also accused the West of ratcheting up tensions in the Black Sea with an increased NATO naval presence and warned against isolating Moscow over the conflict in Georgia, which has applied to join NATO.
Following the summit, Medvedev on Friday was due to visit a Russian military base in Tajikistan, a mountainous former Soviet republic bordering China and Afghanistan that has hosted Russian troops since Soviet times.
SCO leaders were also due to discuss the possibility of Iran joining their organisation. Iran currently has observer status in the group.
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