New Delhi: India can play key role in taking forward the agenda of Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) and help boost the “Asian spirit” and also expand cooperation in areas such as connectivity & economic cooperation.
CICA Secretary General, Ambassador Kairat Sarybay, currently on a visit to India, talked about latter’s role in CICA and explained how the nation with its many thought-provoking things can help on improving relations within the 28-nation grouping.
Notably, India has been a member of CICA after an inter-governmental forum was proposed by Kazakhstan in 2002.
CICA secretary General Kairat Sarybay, after holding talks with many senior government officials told pressmen that the forum could act as ‘bridging platform’ amid differences and even ‘hotspots’ involving some of member states.
He informed that the grouping is currently focusing on enhancing Asia’s role in addressing global challenges.
Apart from India, many other nations including China, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Kuwait, Kazakhstan, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and South Korea are key members of the grouping.
CICA Secretary General on de-escalating India-China tension
When questioned by reporters whether CICA had an plans to help de-escalate tensions between the two Asian giants India & China, he said that CICA mechanism can work if the two sides wish for the same.
“CICA has the principle of taking all decisions by consensus. If we will have no consensus, we cannot act. So this is quite important that all sites involved in any conflict will perform the wish to solve the issue. If they need any assistance from the international community, including CICA, we are ready to provide any assistance that we can,” he told ANI.
He said that CICA is not a magic stick, so we desperately need the good wishes of our members.
“Usually in CICA all of our member countries don’t bring bilateral issues and this is good that still we all together despite some differences and some problems with the members.”
He also recalled how the first CICA summit in Almaty helped to de-escalate the tension between India and Pakistan in 2002.
Kairat Sarybay said, “two major Asian countries in South Asia leaders met in Almaty because CICA provided this platform and at that time, India and Pakistan agreed to de-escalate. I was there at that meeting and international media immediately expressed hope CICA was bound to bring confidence between its stakeholders.”
