The Foreign Ministers\' Council of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) – comprising Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Russia and China --met in a special session on 5 September in Tashkent. Uzbek Foreign Minister Sodyq Sofaev opened the session with an announcement that two SCO permanent bodies -- the secretariat in Beijing and the executive committee of the regional antiterrorism center in Tashkent -- will begin functioning in November. A communique issued at the end of the session called for the UN to take on a larger role in Iraq, supported efforts toward the peaceful resolution of the dispute over North Korea\'s nuclear program and the conflict in the Middle East, and called for the adoption of a convention against international terrorism and the elaboration of an international strategy under UN auspices to combat drug trafficking from Afghanistan. (ITAR-TASS)