CICA 6th Foreign Ministers Meeting

• 14 Oct 2021

Why in News

Recently, the External Affairs Minister addressed the 6^th Ministerial (2021) meeting of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures (CICA) in Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan.

• Last year, Kazakhstan assumed the chairmanship of CICA.
• The 5^th Meeting of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the CICA was held in Beijing in the year 2016.

Key Points

• On Vaccine Maitri:
  
  • India's internationalism (Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam) drives its Vaccine Maitri.
  • In January 2021, India launched the Vaccine Maitri (Vaccine Friendship) initiative – a major diplomatic effort to gift and supply made-in-India vaccines to low-income and developing countries globally.
• On Cross Border Terrorism:
  
  • Advised the forum to strengthen collective resolve to tackle terrorism, arms trafficking, narcotics trade, and other forms of trans-national crimes.
• On Multilateralism:
  
  • Asia especially, but also Africa and Latin America, are inadequately represented in United Nations’ (UN) decision-making.
  • The limitations of the multilateral response to the Covid pandemic were starkly evident. This only makes a case for reformed multilateralism more urgent with each passing day.
• On Afghanistan:
  
  • India underscored the importance of the Taliban regime meeting the expectations of the international community as elaborated in the UN Security Council Resolution 2593.
    
    • The UNSC resolution 2593 unequivocally demands that Afghan territory not be used for sheltering, training, planning or financing terrorist acts; and specifically refers to terrorist individuals proscribed by the UN Security Council, including Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad.
• On Connectivity:
  
  • Connectivity must respect the most basic principle of international relations-respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity.
  • An apparent reference to India’s objection to China’s ambitious infrastructure development plans in Pakistan under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).
    
    • CPEC, which connects Gwadar Port in Balochistan with China’s Xinjiang province, is the flagship project of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
    • India has protested to China over the CPEC as it is being laid through PoK.

About CICA

• The CICA is an intergovernmental forum aimed at strengthening regional cooperation and ensuring peace, security, and stability in Asia.
• The idea of creating the organization was first voiced by Kazakhstan’s First President Nursultan Nazarbayev in 1992 at the 47^th session of the United Nations General Assembly, while the first CICA summit was held in June of 2002.
• The highest decision making organ of CICA is the Meeting of the CICA Heads of State and Government (Summit). The CICA Summit is convened every four years in order to conduct consultations, review the progress of, and set priorities for CICA activities.
  
  • The Meeting of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs is required to be held every two years.
• CICA members include 27 Asian countries, including Azerbaijan, Bahrain, China, Egypt, India, Iran, Israel, Russia, South Korea, and Turkey, nine observer states, and five international organizations.
• India co-chairs two CICA CBMs (Confidence Building Measures) on ‘Development of Secure and Effective Systems of Transportation Corridors,’ and ‘Energy Security’.
• The CICA Secretariat has been located in Almaty (Kazakhstan) since June 2006.

Source: IE