Putin arrives in Dushanbe, where CICA summit will be held
DUSHANBE. June 14 (Interfax) - Russian President Vladimir Putin has arrived in Dushanbe to attend a summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA).
Putin arrived in Tajikistan from Kyrgyzstan, where he attended a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).
The CICA comprises 27 countries (Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bahrain, Vietnam, Egypt, Israel, India, Jordan, Iraq, Iran, Kazakhstan, Cambodia, Qatar, Kyrgyzstan, China, Mongolia, the UAE, Palestine, Pakistan, South Korea, Russia, Tajikistan, Thailand, Turkey, Uzbekistan, Sri Lanka) and 13 observers (Belarus, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the U.S., Ukraine, Philippines, Japan, the UN, the League of Arab States, the International Organization for Migration, the OSCE, and the Parliamentary Assembly of Turkic-Speaking Countries).
The topic of the Saturday session will be the general vision of the safe and more prosperous CICA region.
The heads of the delegations are expected to state their approaches to ensuring global and regional security, strategic security and stability issues, and also issues relating to the development of economic cooperation and the humanitarian sphere.
The meeting will also address the development of the situation in Afghanistan, in the Middle East, in Syria, on the Korean Peninsula, and the situation with Iran.
Putin will voice Russia's "positions both on Afghanistan and on Syria, taking into consideration the increasingly more complicated situation in Idlib, the Iranian nuclear program, and the situation on the Korean Peninsula, including with our recent negotiations with the North Korean leader taken into account," presidential aide Yury Ushakov earlier told journalists.
President Rahmon will deliver a speech at the start of the meeting and will be followed by Xi Jinping, the president of China, the country that previously held the CICA presidency, and former and first president of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev, the founder of the forum.
The Russian president is scheduled to have a number of meetings on the sidelines of the forum. Putin is expected to talk to Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. The Russian president will also meet with Tajik President Emomali Rahmon.
The president may also have informal meetings. Leaders often use the opportunity to have brief meetings at international summits.
Russian presidential press secretary earlier said Putin will talk to many leaders on the sidelines of the summit. He also said the president may talk to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas.