On May 30, the first speakers' meeting of the member states of Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) was held in Moscow. Chairman of the Standing Committee of China's National People's Congress (NPC) Wu Bangguo, Chairman of the Kazakh Senate Nurtai Abykayev, Speaker of the Supreme Council of Kyrgyzstan Marat Sultanov, Chairman of the Russian Federation Council (the upper house) Sergei Mironov, Chairman of the Russian State Duma (the lower house) Boris Gryzlov, Speaker of the Upper House of the Supreme Assembly of Tajikistan Makhmadsaid Ubaidullayev and Speaker of Uzbekistan's Legislature Chamber Erkin Khalilov attended the meeting, exchanged in-depth opinions on such issues as promoting the development of the SCO and strengthening the inter-parliamentary cooperation among member states and signed the Joint Statement of the First Speakers' Meeting of the Member States of Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

The meeting opened at 9:30 a.m. and Chairman Wu delivered an important speech . He said that over the past 5 years since the establishment of the SCO the organization has been following the "Shanghai Spirit" of mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality, consultation, respect for cultural diversity and aspiration for common development to boost the pragmatic cooperation in various fields, with deepening political mutual trust among member states, fairly fruitful security cooperation, increasingly close economic and trade relations and prosperous exchanges in the field of humanities, which brings about tangible benefits to the people of countries in this region and makes outstanding contribution to promoting security, stability and prosperity in the region and the world at large.

After elaborating the necessity and importance of strengthening inter-parliamentary cooperation, Wu especially raised 3 proposals on how to conduct the cooperation among the member states:

First, insisting on conducting work within the framework of the SCO. He said that as a major component of the SCO inter-parliamentary cooperation should follow the purpose and principles of the organization and be oriented towards the organization's basic objectives and major tasks. Parliaments of the member states should make full use of their functions to approve and supervise the implementation of related agreements reached by the governments of member states and offer a strong legal guarantee for the exchanges and cooperation of the SCO.

Second, promoting the pragmatic cooperation among the member states. The cooperation of the SCO covers a wide range of areas, so do the issues of concern to parliamentarians from different member states. It is impossible that the inter-parliamentary cooperation is all-inclusive and therefore we must identify priorities. Parliaments of the member states should revise their laws and related regulations in a timely manner in response to the needs of the SCO to create a sound legal environment for the cooperation in such areas as security, economy and trade, strengthen supervision on governments, urge related government agencies to improve performance, raise job efficiency and enhance service quality and make best use of its advantages in terms of wide contacts, rich human resources and information availability to provide advice on regional economic and trade cooperation and offer service for the cooperation between countries, regions and enterprises.

Third, implementing flexible forms of cooperation. He said that creative work should be conducted in accordance with the real needs of the SCO and the characteristics of inter-parliamentary cooperation. We agree on and support holding regular meetings of top legislators to conduct communications and consultations on major issues of inter-parliamentary cooperation, encouraging the work exchanges between expert committees, friendship groups and offices of the parliaments of member states, strengthening the friendly contacts of young parliamentarians and advancing the effective cooperation in the field of legislative supervision.

Wu also briefly introduced the economic and social progress of China and the development plan of the next 5 years.