Salehi: Iran ready to contribute to establishment of SCO energy club

Foreign Minister Ali-Akbar Salehi says Iran is ready to actively contribute to establishment of energy club of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).Salehi, addressing the meeting of the SCO Prime Ministers in Saint Petersburg on Monday, pointed to the decade long activity of the SCO, saying the Islamic Republic of Iran is ready to expand all-out cooperation with the Organization in different fields, especially energy security and transit expansion. He said expansion of trade and lifting different barriers of trade, including e-commerce, information security, energy security and transit facilitation are among important areas in which Iran is ready to cooperate with the SCO. New strategic and approaches need to be taken to counter threats to information security, especially in the cyber space, said the Minister, adding that the SCO members have high potential to expand cooperation in the field. He said the SCO can take helpful and giant strides for development of its members in the fields of transportation, cargo transit, customs and establishment of free trade zones. He added that the SCO members had earlier taken some helpful and coordinated moves for benefiting from regional transit and transportation facilities but establishment of the North-South corridor and the five-way transit passage from Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Oman and Qatar is an example. He noted that Iran is ready for cooperation with regional states in transit domain.