Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai left for Astana today to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organsation (SCO) Summit meeting. The 11th Summit of the SCO in Kazakhstan capital Astana is expected to spell out the rules of engagement for new members. At the 2010 Tashkent summit, the SCO had decided to lift the moratorium on the expansion of the forum and approved the regulation on the procedure for admitting new members for the SCO. India, Pakistan, Iran and Mongolia are currently Observers in the SCO which is now in the process to finalise rules for taking in new members. SCO was founded on June 15, 2001 and China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan are its members.