TEHRAN — Iranian President Ayatollah Ebrahim Raisi will arrive in Astana, Kazakhstan, to attend a regional summit aimed at boosting interaction and cooperation in Asia.
President Raisi will attend the Sixth Summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA), which will be held in Astana on October 12-13.
According to Kazakh media, the summit will welcome 11 presidents from Azerbaijan, Iraq, Iran, Qatar, Kyrgyzstan, Palestine, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkey and Uzbekistan. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko will attend the sixth CICA Summit as an observer. The Vice Presidents of Vietnam and China will also attend the summit.
Almost 50 delegations from member states, observer states, observer organisations, partner organizations and guests of the Presidency are expected.
Mohammad Jamshidi, director of the Iranian President’s Office for Political Affairs, said President Raisi will arrive in Astana on Thursday for the CICA summit.
“We have had several requests for meetings with the President, but due to lack of opportunities, priority is given to heads of state who have not been met at previous meetings such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the United Nations General Assembly,” Jamshidi told state news agency IRNA.
Jamshidi mentioned the leaders of Qatar and the Republic of Azerbaijan as figures who had asked to meet with Raisi and had no opportunity to meet with the President at the Shanghai meeting and the UN General Assembly.
In August last year, President Raisi met with the Executive Director of the CICA Secretariat, Kairat Sarybay, in Tehran.
“Iran believes that the dynamism of regional organizations is a very important factor in countering unilateralism,” Raisi said at the meeting.
He added: “The Islamic Republic of Iran intends to effectively use the capacities of regional and international institutions to defend the rights and interests of independent countries.”
At the meeting, Sarybay also expressed hope for the continuation and strengthening of the Islamic Republic’s constructive role in the CICA mechanism for promoting peace and security in the region and the world, adding, “Asia plays an important role in governance today of global developments, and CICA is trying to strengthen the role of Asian countries on the international stage.”
He added, “The focus of CICA’s activities is to enhance the role of Asian countries in solving the continent’s problems and to prevent the participation of non-Asian countries in the developments of this continent.”
