At the one day annual summit of the six-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) on June 15, more limelight fell on the leader of an observer country than on any of the main participants. That figure happened to be the controversial president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Despite the lowly observer status accorded to his country, Ahmadinejad went on to publicly invite the SCO members to a meeting in Tehran to discuss energy exploration and development in the region. And the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, proposed that the SCO should form an "energy club".
While making a plea that his country should be accorded full membership of the SCO, the Pakistani president, Parvez Musharraf, highlighted the geo-strategic position of his country as an energy and trade corridor for SCO members. "Pakistan provides a natural link between the SCO states to connect the Eurasian heartland with the Arabian Sea and South Asia," he said.
Given this, the old adage "money talks" ought to be modified to "oil talks".
Founded in 1996 primarily to settle frontier problems between China and its post-Soviet neighbors - Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan - the SCO expanded three years later to include Uzbekistan, which does not share common borders with China or Russia, the two countries at the core of the SCO.
Since then SCO has developed as an organization concerned with regional security, thus focusing on counter-terrorism, defense, and energy cooperation.
Energy-hungry China has its eyes fixed on the large oil and gas reserves that Russia and Kazakhstan possess, and even the modest gas reserves of Uzbekistan.
Another energy-hungry mega-nation, India, which shares a disputed border with China, has been keen to join the group. It has acquired a military base in Tajikistan, an SCO member. And it has excellent relations with Russia. It was with the joint backing of Russia and Tajikistan that India was accorded an observer status a year ago - along with Pakistan, Iran and Mongolia.
The declared aim of the SCO summit to pursue "joint security, energy and development goals, including enhanced cooperation against terrorism, Islamist extremism and separatism" resonates with India.
Equally significant was the summing up statement of the Chinese president, Hu Jinato, who chaired the meeting of 10 countries accounting for half of the human race, in Shanghai. "We hope the outside world will accept the social system and path to development independently chosen by our members and observers and respect the domestic and foreign policies adopted by the SCO participants in line with their national conditions," he said. This was a short hand for non-interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states, a message the United States does not like to hear.
Little wonder that, Iran applied for full membership; as did India.
Last year when the SCO accorded observer status to four countries, it rejected a similar request from the United States.
The reason is not far to guess. The SCO is based on geographical contiguity. Though Iran does not have common land frontiers with any of SCO members, it shares fluvial border with Russia and Kazakhstan in the Caspian Sea. The US does not share borders with any of the SCO members.
The rising importance and coherence of the SCO worries Washington - as well as its closest Asian ally, Japan. "The SCO is becoming a rival block to the US alliance," said a senior Japanese official recently. "It does not share our values. We are watching it very closely."