Anand Sharma to visit Kazakhstan to attend CICA meeting

New Delhi, Aug 23 (UNI) A six-member Indian delegation, led by Minister of State for External Affairs Anand Sharma, will attend the third ministerial meeting of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA) at Almaty in Kazakhstan on August 25.

The day-long meeting, to be held under the chairmanship of Kazakh Foreign Minister Marat Tazhin, will be attended by delegations from all the 21 CICA member-states, six observer states and three international observer organisations including the UN, the OSCE and the League of Arab States.

At the meeting, three countries--Jordan, the UAE and Qatar-- will be formally inducted into the CICA, sources here said.

The participants will sign a declaration on Confidence Building Measures to ensure the progress of CICA.

The sources said that while three members including Mr Sharma will leave here for Almaty tomorrow, they will be joined at the meeting by three senior officials of the Indian Embassy in Astana.

Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev will also attend the meeting.

Mr Nazarbayev had, in his address at the 47th Session of the UN General Assembly in New York in 1992, proposed the setting up of the CICA process for an efficient global system to ensure security of the Asian continent. The first Ministerial meeting was held on September 14, 1999, while the second meeting on October 22, 2004.

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