This comes ahead of an SCO Summit in Uzbekistan on Friday CAIRO: Egypt has signed a memorandum of understanding for its accession to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation as a dialogue partner. This comes ahead of an SCO Summit in Uzbekistan on Friday. The MoU was signed by Hamdi Sanad Loza, Egypt’s deputy foreign minister for African affairs, and SCO Secretary-General Zhang Ming. Loza said Egypt’s accession as a dialogue partner is an important step in strengthening its relations with member states in fields such as trade, investment, energy, transport and tourism, as well as supporting regional security and stability. The SCO was established in 2001 as an intergovernmental organization with the aim of promoting regional security, combating terrorism and drug trafficking, and achieving regional development. Its eight members are China, Russia, India, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, comprising around 44 percent of the world’s population and including four nuclear powers. In addition, four countries have observer status and six are dialogue partners.