President due in Turkey to attend CICA meeting

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is to leave Tehran for Istanbul on Monday to attend the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA).

Leaders from the Middle East, South Asia and the Korean Peninsula will participate in the three-day summit convening exactly one week after the deadly Israeli attack on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla.

The summit held every two years aims to increase security and trust on the Asian continent. It has a permanent secretariat in Kazakhstan.

The summit brings together countries including Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, China, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, India, Islamic Republic of Iran, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Palestine, Republic of Korea, Russia, Tajikistan, Thailand, and Turkey.

The CICA was set up on the initiative of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, shortly after the breakup of the Soviet Union and the independence of his country. It aims to establish norms of international relations in Asia.

It is credited with creating the “Nuclear Weapons Free Zone in Central Asia (Semipalatinsk Treaty, signed in 2006 by Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan).

Tajikistan is the second leg of Ahmadinejad’s three-nation tour. The president will also attend a ceremony at Expo 2010 in China.