CICA member-countries to cooperate in supporting businesses, waging war on drugs - Chinese foreign minister

BEIJING, April 28. /TASS/. Member-countries of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) have endorsed the documents on cooperation in developing small and medium entrepreneurship and the fight against drug trafficking for 2016-2018, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told a news conference at the 5th meeting of the foreign ministers of the CICA member-countries that opened on Thursday. "The Action Plan on cooperation in the fight against drug trafficking for 2016-2018 and the Action Plan on the implementation of confidence-building measures in the development of small and medium entrepreneurship for 2016-2018 have been approved following our meeting," he said. The Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) is an international forum aimed at enhancing cooperation to promote peace, security and stability in Asia. The idea of convening the CICA was first proposed by Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev at the 47th session of the UN General Assembly on October 5, 1992. The initiative was supported by a number of Asian countries. Currently, the CICA comprises 26 countries, including Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Egypt, India, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Pakistan and Russia. Belarus, Indonesia, Malaysia, Ukraine, the U.S., the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Japan, as well as the UN, the Arab League, OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) and the Parliamentary Assembly of Turkic-Speaking Countries have observer status. Read more