CICA: Moving Towards Solid Peace among Asian Nations

As a peace-loving country, Kazakhstan runs an active diplomacy aimed at promoting peace and stability in the world. Kazakh foreign policy initiative on convening the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) was launched by President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev in 1992 while speaking at the 47th UN General Assembly Session. The idea behind the initiative is to have an effective structure on security, which would facilitate discussion of confidence building measures among the Asian countries themselves.

Since its inception, the CICA has proved its relevance and timeliness, as it promotes confidence-building measures among its 20 member countries. The initiative has raised a keen interest from a number of countries and international organizations, which have become observers to the forum.

At present, the following countries are the members of the CICA: Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, China, Egypt, India, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Korea (Republic of),   Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Pakistan, Palestine, Russia, Tajikistan, Thailand, Turkey, Uzbekistan, UAE.

Observers of the CICA are as follows: Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Vietnam, Qatar, Ukraine and the USA; the United Nations, the OSCE and the League of Arab States. International organizations such as the United Nations (UN), Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), League of the Arab States (LAS) have also been involved in an observer capacity.

The CICA aims at creating an atmosphere of trust and confidence in the entire Asian continent. Basic legal framefork for the interaction at the CICA is made by the Declaration on the Principles Guiding Relations between the CICA member states, which was adopted at the ministerial meeting in September 1999 in Almaty, Kazakhstan.

In June 2002 the first CICA Summit provided a venue for gathering of Heads of State/Government who discussed ways of combating new threats and challenges as well as improving bilateral relationship between certain countries of the regions. Among the participants were Russian President V.Putin, then Chinese President Jiang Zemin, former Indian Prime Minister A.B.Vajpayee and Pakistani President P. Musharraf. At the Summit two important multilateral documents have been adopted. They are Almaty Act and CICA Declaration on Eliminating Terrorism and Promoting Dialogue among Civilisations.  Statements made by Heads of Delegations at the CICA Summit highlighted the importance of the CICA in terms of encouraging regional cooperation.

 Another key event, which contributed to the CICA development, was the Ministerial Meeting which took place in October 2004. Its main outcome documents are Catalogue of Confidence Building Measures (CBM) and Rules of Procedure and Ministerial Declaration.  At the event Thailand's then Foreign Minister Surakiart Sathirathai signed the basic CICA documents and thereby Thailand became the 17th full-fledged member of the CICA.

The 2nd CICA Summit was held on 17th of June, 2006. In this meeting along with the Chairman participated leaders of   China, Russia, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, Prime-Minister of Thailand, and also the high-ranking dignitaries of Turkey, Israel, Mongolia, Republic of Korea, India, Iran, Palestine and Egypt. The Declaration of the Second CICA Summit (a universal political document) has been adopted and the Statute of the CICA Secretariat (the basic document on practical structuring and development of the Conference) was signed.