Iran, ECO Science Foundation Ink Cooperation Agreement

Addressing the meeting between Head of Iran's National Park of Sciences, Soft Technologies and Cultural Industries Seyed Komeil Tayyebi and President of the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) Science Foundation (ECOSF) Mohammad Hossein Imani Khoshkhou, Tayyebi said, "Our activities in the ECO Science Foundation are in the fields of scientific exchanges, supporting scientific and technological activities, basic sciences and engineering and entrepreneurial fields, and from this point of view, the activities of the National Park of Science and Soft Technologies and Cultural Industries are relevant to our activities in the ECO Science Foundation."

“The ECO Science Foundation has so far had highly good relations with various scientific institutes or centers in Iran and today, the National Park of Soft Sciences and Technologies and Cultural Industries has a high activity capacity in our field of activity, specially in terms of commercialization and exports,” he added.

“A number of Iranian knowledge-based companies held an exhibition in Pakistan a month ago which was very well received, and this shows how much capacity we have to expand the 500-milliom-people market in ECO member states,” Tayyebi said.

ECO Science Foundation (ECOSF), a Specialized Agency of the ECO for promotion of Science and Technology leading to economic development.

The Basic Charter of ECO was formed under the Treaty of Izmir as a result of the meeting of the member countries held in Izmir, Turkey on 12th March, 1977. It envisaged the establishment of ECO Science Foundation as a specialized agency of ECO to function as a reservoir of highly skilled scientific and technical manpower and to facilitate promotion of scientific research among the member states.

The ECO Council of Ministers (COM) at its 3rd meeting held on 6-7 Feb, 1993 at Quetta, Pakistan called for establishing such an institution by 1995. The Charter of the Foundation was signed by all the 10 Member States at the 3rd ECO Summit in 1995 at Islamabad, however, so far only Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan have ratified it. Other Member States, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkey and Uzbekistan, have to ratify the Charter.

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