Baku: The Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) as a regional platform and mechanism has significant potential to fill existing gaps in the area of international cooperation, Deputy Director at the Institute for International Relation Studies, Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, Wang Zhen said, Trend reports. He made the remark at the 13th Meeting of the CICA Think Tank Forum on the theme “Resonance of Development and Security: Regional Cooperation and Governance in the Institutional Transformation of CICA” in Baku today.
According to Trend News Agency, Zhen emphasized that the main driving force of CICA is consensus, highlighting that the key task for the future is to strengthen and develop this consensus. He noted that changes in global geopolitics create situations that must be addressed through joint efforts. Zhen further added the importance of enhancing institutional effectiveness to achieve CICA’s set goals.
He explained that CICA has developed a comprehensive working mechanism, from summits to specialized centers, covering a wide range of areas. However, he stressed the need to not only maintain this structure but also to increase its effectiveness in the future.
At the 1992 UN General Assembly, Kazakhstan’s then-President Nursultan Nazarbayev proposed the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA). The Declaration on Principles Guiding Relations between CICA Member States and the Almaty Act, approved in 1999 and 2002, respectively, are the organization’s basic texts. Asian nations welcomed the CICA plan, and the interested countries met for seven years to explore CICA modalities and create basic papers. On September 14, 1999, 15 member states attended the first CICA Ministers of Foreign Affairs meeting, where CICA Member States adopted the Declaration on Principles Guiding Relations during this meeting.