BAKU, October 15. /TASS/. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will take part in the 7th Summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA) in Baku.
The top Russian diplomat arrives in Baku on Wednesday and has already held a meeting with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi.
According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, the event will "address the further development of CICA, including its integration into the broader landscape of cross-platform cooperation across the Eurasian space."
"Discussions are expected to cover a wide range of practical cooperation areas on the CICA agenda, including the spheres overseen by Russia: support for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and the assurance of international information security," it said, adding that the participants will also exchange views on pressing international and regional issues.
One of the summit’s expected outcomes is the accession of Laos to the Conference as a full-fledged member, the ministry said.
The summit’s agenda is expected to focus on issues of ensuring the region’s sustainable development, strengthening connectivity across the broader continent, and addressing new challenges and threats, including in the area of international information security.
The summit is expected to yield a general policy declaration and a document on raising the standards of occupational safety.
CICA is a multilateral dialogue platform for addressing pressing regional issues and deepening cooperation among member states to build confidence in the military-political, economic and humanitarian spheres, as well as in addressing new challenges and threats. The initiative to establish this format was put forward by the then Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev in 1992.
CICA has 28 member countries, namely Russia, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Egypt, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Pakistan, Palestine, Qatar, the Republic of Korea, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Thailand, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam and 15 observers - Belarus, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, the Philippines, Turkmenistan, the United States, Ukraine, Japan, the Arab League, the International Organization for Migration, the OSCE, and the Parliamentary Assembly of Turkic States.
The CICA Chair is elected for a two-year term, with the possibility of mandate extension. Kazakhstan held presidency in 2020-2024 and was succeeded by Azerbaijan in December 2024. The summits are held every four years.