By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Senior officials from across the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation are gathering in Islamabad next week for the first substantial coordination talks since Pakistan took over leadership of the eight-nation bloc, in a meeting Pakistani officials have billed as the opening move in a two-year diplomatic programme that will culminate in a full leaders’ summit in the capital.
The Council of National Coordinators, the SCO’s key working-level body, convenes in Islamabad from Monday to Wednesday, bringing together national coordinators from the organisation’s member states alongside officials from the SCO Secretariat. Pakistan’s own national coordinator will chair the sessions.
The gathering marks the first formal meeting to take place under Pakistan’s chairmanship of the SCO’s Council of Heads of State for the 2026-27 term, a role Islamabad formally assumed earlier this month at the bloc’s annual leaders’ summit in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. The Foreign Office confirmed the dates and agenda in a statement issued on Sunday.
According to the ministry, the coordinators are expected to work through what officials described as a wide-ranging agenda, encompassing the schedule of activities planned under Pakistan’s chairmanship, groundwork for forthcoming SCO meetings and events, and other unresolved matters before the organisation.
Islamabad has framed its stewardship of the bloc around the slogan “Turning Vision into Action: Connectivity, Innovation and Shared Prosperity”, and officials say this week’s talks will help translate that theme into a concrete work plan. The Foreign Office said Pakistan’s chairmanship would concentrate on strengthening regional connectivity, encouraging innovation, deepening economic ties and expanding contact between the populations of member states, with the broader aim of turning shared commitments into initiatives that deliver practical benefit.
The ministry added that Pakistan intended to work closely with every member state and with the SCO Secretariat itself as it pursued those goals through the remainder of its term.
This week’s meeting is being treated by Pakistani officials chiefly as a staging post. The Foreign Office said the talks would feed directly into preparations for a string of higher-level engagements scheduled over the coming two years, the most significant of which is the SCO Council of Heads of State summit that Pakistan is due to host in Islamabad in August 2027 — the gathering of the bloc’s presidents and prime ministers that represents the organisation’s highest decision-making forum.
Pakistan secured the rotating chairmanship at the SCO’s September summit in Bishkek, where Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif represented the country during a three-day official visit that also took in the accompanying SCO Plus summit. Addressing the gathering, Sharif set out a plan of priorities for Pakistan’s tenure, identifying information technology and artificial intelligence, energy development, poverty reduction, disaster management, healthcare, culture and sport as areas where the bloc should concentrate its efforts. He urged fellow member states to move beyond declarations of intent, calling for the SCO’s stated ambitions to be converted into tangible outcomes and pressing the case for closer regional connectivity.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, founded in 2001 and dominated by China and Russia, groups together eight member states spanning much of Eurasia and has increasingly positioned itself as a forum for coordinating security and economic policy across the region. Pakistan has been a full member since 2017, having previously held observer status, and hosted a meeting of the bloc’s Council of Heads of Government in Islamabad in October 2024.
Beyond the Council of National Coordinators, Islamabad currently holds two further positions of standing within the organisation. Pakistan has chaired the SCO’s Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure, the Tashkent-based body that coordinates efforts against terrorism and extremism among member states, since September last year, a term due to run until this autumn. In July, Islamabad hosted the twelfth meeting of the Heads of Border Services of the SCO’s competent authorities, part of a programme of events the country has run under that mandate covering cyber security, information-sharing and border control.
Building for 2027
With the leaders’ summit now under 18 months away, city authorities in Islamabad have begun a parallel push to ready the capital’s infrastructure. The Capital Development Authority has invited bids for the upgrading of the existing Jinnah Convention Centre and for a new block to accompany it, part of a wider effort to secure a venue equal to the scale of the 2027 gathering. A separate, purpose-built venue — the New Islamabad Convention, Exhibition and Expo Centre, planned for a site near Malpur — is also under way, with the CDA having opened financial bids for the project over the summer.
Accommodation has emerged as a more immediate concern for city planners. The authority has been working to secure 4,000 hotel rooms in the capital that meet international standards in time for the summit. Officials at the CDA said that while Islamabad already had more than 4,000 hotel rooms in total, roughly a quarter of that stock fell short of the standard expected for a major diplomatic gathering. In response, the authority has moved to encourage hotel operators to build new rooms, accelerate developments already under construction and begin new projects altogether, with the capital also facing demand from other international fixtures pencilled in for 2027, including the South Asian Games and a meeting of the International Olympic Committee.
This week’s talks in Islamabad are not expected to produce major announcements of their own. Rather, diplomats have characterised the coordinators’ meeting as procedural groundwork — the first of many working-level sessions likely to punctuate Pakistan’s chairmanship before it hands over the reins at the conclusion of the 2027 summit.
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