What to watch for in Shanghai

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit got underway today in Shanghai.

The leaders of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Russia and China will mark five years since the regional security forum was founded in Shanghai in July 2001.

Under the chairmanship of the host, Chinese leader Hu Jintao, the SCO summit is expected to review the five years of the organization's activities, exchange opinions on international and regional affairs and draw up plans for further development. The leaders are also expected to sign a set of agreements, the forum's press center said.

The SCO originally dealt with security and confidence-building measures, including border conflicts, terrorism and militant Islam. Today the organization also covers economics, transportation, culture, disaster relief, and law enforcement, but security and economic cooperation are priorities.

What will be most interesting to watch in this summit, though, is what the SCO does with Iran. Iranian President Ahmadinejad is going to meet with the Chinese and Russian leaders in Shanghai. Though reports are it won't happen at this summit, if the SCO decides to give full membership to Iran, it will be a clear signal that Russia and China are willing to be more confrontational with the US.

Ahmadinejad was to represent his nation, which has observer status in a regional grouping now gathering in China's largest city, but he was expected to also have his first meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao on the sidelines.

Ahmadinejad is only a guest at Thursday's summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which groups China, Russia, and four Central Asian states plus a handful of observer nations, including Iran.

But attention will be on him more than anyone else, not least because he is also set to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin for the first time since an encounter at the United Nations last year.

This article in the Asia Times glibly describes the danger:

But the gambit, coming in the context of Iran's strained relations with the West over Tehran's nuclear program, drew notice. The Washington Times quoted David Wall, professor at the University of Cambridge's East Asia Institute, as saying that "an expanded SCO would control a large part of the world's oil and gas reserves and [a] nuclear arsenal. It would essentially be an OPEC [Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries] with bombs."

Pakistan made some news today at the summit.

President Pervez Musharraf on Wednesday said Pakistan wants to expand the Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) gas pipeline project up to China, reports Online news agency.

The report provided no further details on Pakistan's plans are to extend the pipeline up to China.

Pakistan, India and Iran are exploring the possibility of building a 2,775-km pipeline to deliver Iranian gas to the two South Asian nations.

Pakistan has long been exploring ways to be an energy conduit to China, and thereby profit from it. I've written before that one of the reasons China is developing the port in Gwadar (in Pakistan's Balochistan province) is energy resources could be transported up to China from that port.

If this pipeline also included China, it would have ramifications across the region. India actually wouldn't mind extending the pipeline to China, because then any disruptions in the supply upstream in Iran or Pakistan would also affect China, not just India, and so the move is seen as a way to help ensure stability.