On May 29,2003, the heads of state from the six member countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) met in Moscow to discuss how to grasp opportunities, meet challenges,  strengthen coordination and expand cooperation in the current situation, to promote regional peace and development. They reached consensus on a broad scale and issued Moscow Declaration after the meeting.  

This is the third summit meeting of SCO since it was born in June 2001.

At 10:45 in the morning, heads of state from Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, arrived at the meeting avenue in the Kremlin Palace. Russian President Putin was await for their arrival. President Hu received the warm welcome of President Putin.

After that, the six heads of state held a small-scale meeting at the Catherine Hall. Putin extended welcome to the coming of the top leaders of the member countries. He said that President Narzarbayev of Kazakhstan was still the chairman of this summit although Moscow had taken the place of Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan as the meeting avenue. Narzarbayev also extended welcome to President Hu for his attending the summit for the first time.

At 12:30 pm, the formal meeting was held in the Alexandra Hall. President Hu delivered an important speech at the meeting, explaining the stance of China on the developing direction of SCO, the international situation, and other major issues.

On SCO, he stressed that SCO had gone through an extraordinary path and endured the test of time since its establishment two years ago. He added that SCO's achievements had shown the basic purposes and developing principles of the organization were correct and must be maintained and followed unswervingly.

On the current international situation, Hu pointed out that China advocates for the establishment of a new international political and economic order in accordance with the interests and wishes of the world people, in order to safeguard permanent peace and promote common development of the whole world.

Hu stressed China stands for democracy in international relations, saying every country should have an equal status in international affairs, and international issues should be resolved through consultations. Principles of international law and norms of international relations should be respected, and the authority and leading role of the United Nations in handling key international issues should be protected. He also said that a just and fair international political and economic order should be dealt with mutual security as its premise, balanced development as basis, commonly recognized legal principles as guarantee, dialogue and cooperation as methodology and common prosperity as goal.

The leaders spoke highly of the achievements the SCO has made since its founding two years ago and a series of resolutions passed in this meeting on organizational building of SCO. The leaders said they believed the SCO would be an important player in maintaining regional and world security, stability and development, and would play an increasingly important role in international affairs. Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who chaired the meeting, said the summit was fruitful and had defined the direction the SCO would move in in the future.

At the summit, the leaders reached much consensus on the institutionalization of the SCO and some major international issues. They agreed to launch a SCO secretariat and a regional anti-terrorism center no later than Jan 1, 2004. They also decided that next year's SCO summit meeting would be held in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. President of Uzbekistan Karimov noted that his country would make concerted efforts with other member countries of SCO to ensure the next year's summit meeting a success.  

The six heads of states signed a declaration at the end of the meeting.

Hu pointed out in his talk that the achievements of SCO since its establishment was a full manifestation that the strategic judgments and policy decisions of the members were correct, so were the set purposes and developing directions. Hu said that the international situation was currently undergoing deep changes which present new tasks to the building of SCO. All the six leaders considered that concrete measures should be taken and steps of organizational building and cooperation should be further expedited, in order to promote SCO to play a more active role in the international and regional affairs. He also said that to press on with the constructing SCO's standing bodies, deepening of cooperation in the economic and security fields and expanding the external exchanges of the organization is the central task of SCO in the next stage of work.