Addressing the ambassadors Dmitry Mezentsev proposed to hold a high-level SCO expert meeting in September-October 2008 in one of the Russian cities: Moscow, St.-Petersburg or Yekaterinburg.
The expert meeting will be a kind of preparatory event on the eve of the SCO Summit in June 2009.
According to D. Mezentsev, the agenda of the expert meeting should include functioning of the SCO executive bodies, parliamentary meeting conduct rules, cooperation in the period between sessions, deadlines of parliamentary meetings and participation of the observer-states (SCO Business Council Web-Site).
Dmitry Mezentsev also told the ambassadors about the recent meeting of the Business Council Board held in Chinese Sanya-City in January 2008.
"It seemed to us that we again significantly deepened our discussion on the concept of the Shanghai Health Organization (SHO). We remember how this concept was supported in general by the heads of state and heads of government last year. We remember the initiative of Premier of the Chinese State Council Wen Jiabao to conduct regular meetings of SCO health ministers”, he said.
"I should say also that the Russian Government discussed more active efforts of the BC National Branch and Business Council in general …in order to harmonize the SHO regulatory base and particular activities with the plans and development pace of the Organization itself”, Mezentsev noted.
According to him, the Board of the SCO Business Council reviewed a wide range of problems and “heard revised proposals of the Kazakh party to improve functioning of the SCO Energy Club, as a kind of platform for discussions today”.
D. Mezentsev said that the participants of the SCO BC Board meeting committed to accelerate studying the concept of SCO network university, so called SCO Educational Center.
"Guaranteed assistance in establishment of the SCO Education Centre was promised by such Russian higher educational institutions as the Moscow State University, Academy of National Economy at the Government of the Russian Federation, Academy of Foreign Trade and Moscow State Institute of International Relations. It means that we would like to use the capabilities of these institutions for establishment of the Center, which should provide not only initial training but also conversion training of specialists for various economy branches”, Dmitry Mezentsev noted.
"We also supported an initiative of the Uzbekistan National Brach to hold a conference devoted to development and improvement of cooperation in the insurance business sector. But we would not like to hold this conference as a forum, at which insurance business representatives would just get together in Moscow in late April and tell each other about their work. Therefore we formulated an agenda of the conference as “Insurance As Factor Promoting Social and Economic Development of SCO Countries”
"According to the document available with us for the moment, we may expect a very high level of representation. As agreed preliminarily, since the conference will be held in Moscow it will be opened by Russian Vice Premier Narishkin, who is a special representative of the Government in charge of relationships with the CIS countries, and in particular economic relations between the SCO countries”, Mezentsev claimed.
"We believe it is necessary to focus on improvement of cooperation between insurance business communities both in the zones in migration and when working with the people who came to our countries as temporary labors. And surely, we would like to discuss insurance of investments and probably insurance of political risks”, the Deputy Chairman of the Council of Federation emphasized.
According to him, the conference will be held in the Center for International Trade in Moscow on April 24-25. A meeting of the SCO BC Board will be held at the same time.
Dmitry Mezentsev told the ambassadors that the Russian Federation received a proposal of the Tajik party to send again a team of medical officers and high-level specialists to several regions of Tajikistan. According to him, the parties agreed to send such team and it will work in Tajikistan in summer of 2008.
Dmitry Mezentsev also expressed gratitude to the Kazakh party for the support provided to the Russian Health Train working in the territory of the Republic.
"I would like to emphasize that it is not an independent work of Russian medical specialists in the territories of the fraternal SCO countries, it is a joint work of Tajik, Kirgiz and Kazakh medical officers together with their colleagues to restore the style of relations within the framework of a common medical school and common medical information space. And it is a good backup for making the Shanghai Health Organization a public and state structure relying on the state-private partnership and functioning for many years”, he noted.
Dmitry Mezentsev also confirmed that the agreements on cooperation in this sphere achieved last year with the Uzbek party remain valid.
At the end of the meeting Dmitry Mezentsev invited the SCO ambassadors and national delegations to take part in the V-th Baikal Economic Forum in Irkutsk on September 8-11.
He said that September 11 is especially called the SCO Day within the framework of the Baikal Economic Forum. The forum will be chaired by Serguei Mironov, Chairman of the Upper Chamber of the Russian Parliament, and co-chaired by Elvira Nabiulina, Minister of Economic Development, and Dmitry Kozak, Minister of Regional Development. The forum agenda is “Europe-Russia-Asian-Pacific Region: Ways to Integration and Cooperation”.
