Russia’s Lavrov to take part in meeting of CICA Foreign Ministers in Beijing on April 28

MOSCOW, April 27. /TASS/. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is to meet his counterparts from the member-states of Conference on Interaction and Confidence-building Measures in Asia (CICA) in Beijing on Thursday, April 28. According to the statement of Russian Foreign Ministry, regional security and combating international terrorism will be the main topics on the agenda of the 5th meeting of CICA. "We consider CICA as a useful mechanism for multilateral cooperation on implementation of measures of trust in military-political, economic, environmental and human dimensions, as well as in fight against new challenges and threats. We share the aspirations of the Chinese chairmanship and other partners to build practical cooperation," the ministry said. "Russia stands for the development of cooperation of the Conference with regional organizations and fora in the framework of network diplomacy," the ministry said. The meetings of the heads of states and governments as well as Foreign Ministers of the CICA member-states are held every four years. The purpose of this multilateral mechanism is promotion of dialogue and development of practical confidence-building measures in the field of politics, security, economy. Since 2014, China has been chairman of the CICA. The line-up of the CICA includes 26 states - Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Egypt, India, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Cambodia, Qatar, China, Kyrgyzstan, Republic of Korea, Mongolia, the United Arab Emirates, Palestine, Russia, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Thailand, Turkey and Uzbekistan. Belarus, Indonesia, Malaysia, Ukraine, the United States, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Japan, as well as the UN, the Arab League, the OSCE and the Parliamentary Assembly of Turkic-speaking countries have observer status in CICA. Read more