Although Armenia and Azerbaijna received dialogue partner status in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), their territorial dispute is unlikely to interest the organization members, analyst Richard Weitz writes in The Diplomat.

In the article, the analyst reasons how justified was the inclusion of new members in the organization which was close for expansion for over 10 years.

According to him, after two months it’s apparent that all the talk about a resurgent Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) was at least premature, if not overoptimistic.

“Although the SCO has tried to enhance the status of non-members, there is no evidence that these other states have benefited much from their lesser status,” the author writes.

Thus, for instance, Turkey became a dialogue partner in 2012 but has not even bothered to send top officials to the SCO annual leadership summits or other meetings.

The author thinks this will also be the case with Armenia and Azerbaijan. “Although the decision at Ufa to give Azerbaijan and Armenia dialogue partner status might provide these rivals another forum with which to resolve their territorial dispute, there is no evidence that China or other SCO governments besides perhaps Russia want to entangle themselves in the Nagorno-Karabakh issue,” Weitz writes.

Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cambodia and Nepal joined the SCO as dialogue partners during the session of the SCO Heads of State Council meeting held in Ufa in June 2015.