国内英语新闻:Transportation priority for SCO cooperation: President Hu

BEIJING, June 6 (Xinhua) -- Member states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) will explore long-term policies to maintain peace, development and cooperation under the new circumstances, Chinese President Hu Jintao said.

Hu made the remarks in a joint written interview with the media organizations of SCO member states, prior to the opening of the 12th Meeting of the Council of Heads of Member States of the SCO on Wednesday.

Hu said that one of the most important topics of the summit is to research measures to further strengthen friendship and cooperation among SCO member states.

Transportation is one of the preferential items that SCO member states should cooperate on developing, and SCO member states are consulting an agreement to make international traffic more convenient, Hu said.

To ink the agreement, a traffic network covering all SCO member states will be built, aiming to promote trade and people-to-people exchanges, as well as speed up economic development and improve people's living standards among those countries, said Hu.

"We will promote establishing and perfecting the finance safeguarding mechanism of the SCO. China is willing to establish the mechanism at an early date so as to serve the economic construction and regional development of SCO members," Hu said.

The SCO was founded in Shanghai on June 15, 2001, and currently has six full members -- China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Mongolia, Iran, Pakistan and India are four observer states, and its dialogue partners include Belarus and Sri Lanka.