UN secretary general to visit Kazakhstan on July 3-4 for SCO+ summit

ASTANA. July 1 (Interfax) - UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres will pay an official visit to Kazakhstan, a leg of his Central Asian tour, and will attend a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the UN mission to Kazakhstan said on Saturday.

Guterres will visit Almaty and Astana on July 3-4 to meet with Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, other high-ranking officials, and UN employees, the mission said.

Guterres has been invited to the SCO summit in Astana on July 4. He will make a speech at the SCO+ session.

Guterres will underline the need for reaffirming the common commitment to the multilateral approach based on the UN Charter, international law and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and say that peace should be the primary goal of the multilateral system, the mission said. He will also emphasize that profound global disagreements hinder the unity of states for countering two serious challenges posed by climate change and digital technologies, it said.

The summit in Astana will be held in the SCO+ format with the participation of member states, observers and dialogue partners.

The SCO has nine member states, namely, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Afghanistan, Belarus and Mongolia are observers.

The Central Asia tour of Guterres began on June 29. The first leg of his trip was Tashkent, Uzbekistan, to be followed by visits to Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.