Informal meeting of CICA Foreign Ministers may be held in 2017

Almaty. April 28. Silkroadnews – An informal meeting of the foreign ministers of member states of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-building Measures in Asia (CICA) may take place in the framework of the UN General Assembly in 2017, Director General of Chinese Foreign Ministry’s Department of European and Central Asian Affairs Gui Congyou said, TASS agency informs.

“We also plan to hold an informal meeting of foreign ministers of CICA member states in the framework of UN General Assembly next year. In the first half of 2017, China, as a chair, plans to hold CICA’s second non-governmental forum,” said Gui Congyou.

“We are currently discussing with colleagues the possibility of holding a CICA summit in 2018,” he said.
As it was reported, on April 27-28 Beijing hosts the meeting of the foreign ministers of CICA member states.
CICA is an intergovernmental forum to address the key regional issues and develop cooperation between the participating countries. The idea of convening the CICA and its transformation into a permanent structure was proposed by Kazakhstani President Nursultan Nazarbayev at the 47th session of the UN General Assembly in October 1992.

Among 26 CICA member-states there are Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Egypt, India, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Cambodia, Qatar, China, Kyrgyzstan, Republic of Korea, Mongolia, the United Arab Emirates, Palestine, Russia, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Thailand, Turkey and Uzbekistan. Belarus, Indonesia, Malaysia, Ukraine, the United States, Philippines, Sri Lanka and Japan, along with the UN, Arab League, OSCE and Parliamentary Assembly of Turkic-speaking countries have the observer status.