August 11, 2007 (LPAC)--Chinese President Hu Jintao and Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet twice next week, both at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Bishkek, Kyrgystan, and at the SCO joint maneuvers near the Russian Ural city of Chelyabinsk. Security cooperation and joint energy projects are on the agenda, Voice of Russia reported Aug. 10. Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister Li Hui announced in Beijing yesterday that the SCO nations, which include China, Russia, and the four Central Asian nations of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, are to sign a "long-term good-neighbor treaty of friendship and cooperation" in Bishkek, aimed at strengthening ties between the SCO nations.

As the SCO maneuvers got underway yesterday, Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky, Chief of the Russian General Staff, said that successful economic activities within the SCO "are impossible without building up security in the region, particularly involving the SCO military agencies in this process," Itar-Tass reported. Baluyevsky said that the SCO is not forming any military-political block, but that it is a priority to work out "conceptual foundations of military cooperation within the SCO framework." He also said that the SCO is preparing to deal not only with terrorism, extremism, and drug trafficking, but also stressed the problems of ensuring information security "in conditions of the growing pressure on part of media outlets in some Western countries. These countries keep making attempts to persuade our peoples that so called 'truly democratic'" public institutions "on the Western pattern" must be set up, and this "contributes to the destabilization of the situation in the countries of the region."