The 5th CICA Summit to be held in the capital of Tajikistan

One of the significant political events of this year will undoubtedly be the Fifth Summit of Heads of State of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA), which will be held on June 15 in Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan.

The CICA is an international forum to strengthen cooperation, established to ensure peace, security and stability in Asia.

The CICA is a very serious organization, including 27 member states that cover about 90 percent of the territory and population of Asia, another 8 states and 5 international organizations, including the UN, have observer status.

It is interesting that from the initiative of the creation of the CICA, first announced in October 1992 at the 47th session of the UN General Assembly, belonged to the first president of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev.

"The second aspect on which I would like to dwell is the problem of peace and security on our continent - Asia, or even wider - Eurasia. We are talking about the initiative of the Republic of Kazakhstan to hold the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA). The idea of creating on the continent structures of security and cooperation in Asia in the style of the same structures in Europe has long been in the air, but has not yet received wide support," said Nazarbayev.

It should be noted that already in this first speech on the CICA, the Kazakh president clearly outlined his vision of the phased creation of an OSCE counterpart in Asia. This plan was implemented thanks to the tremendous work carried out by the diplomatic corps of Kazakhstan under the leadership of Nazarbayev, with the help of other countries of the continent who are more interested in this project.

Nazarbayev indicated an approximate time frame for the creation of the Conference and the mechanism for its continuous interaction with other continental collective security systems - 2000-2005 years.

And on June 4, 2002 in Almaty, the former capital of Kazakhstan, opened the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia, in which delegations from 16 countries took part. Following the summit, the Almaty Act was adopted - the CICA Charter, and the Declaration on the elimination of terrorism and the promotion of dialogue among civilizations.

At that time, the Western world did not attach much importance to this event, but some media drew attention to the fact that the leaders of India and Pakistan, who traditionally settled in various hotels, somewhat softened their positions: "It seems that the summit in Alma-Ata has already proved useful in that it has somewhat reduced the bellicose level of rhetoric between the two states".

"In modern conditions it is impossible to speak with confidence about the economic prosperity of our continent without protective mechanisms that could contribute to a safer existence of the peoples of Asia. Therefore, I believe that this forum is extremely important not only in terms of discussing pressing political problems, but also in terms of the necessary guarantees to ensure sustainable economic growth of our countries, "said Nazarbayev, speaking at the Summit plenary session.

The Kazakh leader noted that the signing of the Almaty Act does not mean that tomorrow a structure like the OSCE will be ready. But this document makes it possible to conduct specific negotiations and consultations to create the organizational foundations of the CICA.

Currently, the CICA, whose secretariat is located in Kazakhstan, seeks to strengthen contacts and ties with the UN, regional and international organizations to support its efforts to strengthen peace, security and economic development in Asia. Within the framework of the Meeting, there is a special document - the Catalog of Confidence Building Measures, which contains a list of confidence building measures in five main dimensions: economic, environmental, humanitarian, combating new challenges and threats, and military-political. In general, work has begun on all five dimensions.

At the Fourth CICA Summit, held on May 21, 2014 in Shanghai, Nursultan Nazarbayev took the initiative to create the Organization for Security and Development of Asia (OSDA).

"The global crisis in which the world is plunged is a general civilizational crisis that is systemic. Therefore, we, the countries of Asia, need to take up the peaceful development of the continent ourselves. OSDA can become an important tool in this process", said the first president of Kazakhstan.

By this time, many Asian leaders already had an understanding of the need to reformat CICA activities, which successfully functioned as an international forum and dialogue platform. We need an organization that will be able to deal with urgent intergovernmental problems, primarily economic cooperation and the resolution of existing conflicts. That is, for the Asian counterpart of the OSCE, what an OSDA should be, a wide field of activity is already ready. At the same time, many experts note that the OSDA is to emerge in more difficult conditions than the OSCE. Nevertheless, all previous work on the development of the CICA gives grounds to consider the new project to be quite realistic.

Assessing the colossal work that resulted in the emergence of a new authoritative organization, including the states in which half of the world's population live, one should not forget how this process began.

So, in 1992, the leader of one of the newly formed states of the post-communist space comes to the podium of the United Nations and proposes the creation of an Asian OSCE. What made the representatives of Asian countries, many of whom count their history for thousands of years, listen to this voice? Of course, one of Nazarbayev’s decision to close the largest nuclear test site in Kazakhstan, made even before independence, of which everyone knew, of course, attracted the attention of this speaker. But, apparently, not only that. The speech of the Kazakh leader, containing a brief but in-depth analysis of global and continental politics, succinct and persuasive language, completely built around the core issue of security in the world, made us seriously think about the problems that Nazarbayev offered to consider.

Today it is necessary to recognize that the CICA, to a large extent - the creation of Nazarbayev, as well as the Eurasian Economic Union. The idea of creating the CICA arose thanks to his great political foresight, his sense of duty in ensuring regional security and stability in the world as a whole.

The upcoming Fifth CICA Summit is expected to be attended by top officials from 20 countries. Taking into account the previous developments and the high level of participation of the CICA member states, it can be expected that the Summit will be able to give new impetus to the further promotion of confidence building measures, will be an effective platform for discussing the most pressing issues of concern to all members of the CICA.

The author is an observer on Central Asia affairs based in Beijing. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.