CICA SENIORS MEETING CALLS FOR MORE ACTION; TURKEY

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 NEW DELHI 000354

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 02/23/2019
TAGS: PREL PGOV KZ TU IN
SUBJECT: CICA SENIORS MEETING CALLS FOR MORE ACTION; TURKEY
OFFERS TO TAKE OVER CHAIRMANSHIP

REF: ASTANA 265

Classified By: A/PolCouns Les Viguerie for Reasons 1.4 (B, D)


1. (C) Summary. The February 18-20 Senior Officials
Committee/Special Working Group meeting of the Conference on
Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA)
included the usual litany of decisions taken on past agenda
items and recommendations for future discussions, but was
noteworthy for two encouraging developments: 1) a
confirmation by Turkey that it is prepared to take over
chairmanship of CICA beginning with the 2010 summit; and 2) a
rather broad acknowledgment among members that CICA has done
enough talking, and now needs to move into action mode if it
is to remain relevant. Turkey's delegate to the CICA
conference told Poloff Turkey will use its chairmanship to
encourage greater interaction between CICA and the west, will
look to the OSCE as model for CICA, and will be watching for
signals from the new Obama administration on America's Asia
policy so that it can assess how CICA might fit in. End
Summary.


2. (SBU) Comment. While this most recent CICA senior
officials' meeting didn't break any new ground per se, the
Turkish offer to take over as chair of the group, coupled
with the widely felt desire for the forum to become more
action-oriented, offers hope that a new era for CICA may be
on the horizon. In a sidebar with Poloff, Turkish delegate
Omer Tuzel said his hope for Turkey's chairmanship of the
group would be to make CICA more like the OSCE of Asia.
Whether he and his colleagues in the chairmanship role can
bring CICA's relevance up to the level of OSCE remains to be
seen, but at the very least this first non-Kazakhstan
chairmanship will serve as an endorsement of the group's
broader focus and appeal. Asian states continue to search
for a political architecture that is both inclusive and
relevant. CICA still has a long way to go to meet those
criteria, but some members at least appear interested in
pushing forward CICA as a meaningful pan-Asian forum. With
Turkey apparently eager to both take on more substantive
issues, and include western countries more in the discussion,
the U.S. will have an opportunity to take on a more involved
observer role, and can contribute to making CICA a more
"meaty" conference. End Comment.


3. (SBU) Wrapping up two days of special working group and
senior officials meetings, the Senior Officials Committee
(SOC) of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence
Building Measures in Asia convened (with observer countries,
including the U.S.) on February 20 to announce decisions made
and recommendations for the forum's future. Kazakh Deputy
Foreign Minister Nurlan Yermekbayev, Chair of the SOC, began
the meeting by congratulating Jordan and the United Arab
Emirates as new members and, introducing a theme that would
be repeated by numerous other delegates, expressed the need
for CICA to become more action-oriented, saying "The time has
come for CICA to initiate actions." Yermekbayev described
CICA's current state by saying "The conveyor belt has been
constructed. Now the machinery sitting on the belt needs to
be assembled and put to work."


4. (SBU) Indian Special Secretary Vivek Katju, as host, spoke
of the diversity of CICA's membership and the inherent
opportunity therein for approaches to regional security that
don't apply to other fora. He called for more substantive
action on previously discussed initiatives on drug

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trafficking, transportation corridors and energy security as
engines for economic development. Taking a moment to look up
from his prepared remarks to cast a gaze directly at the
Pakistani delegation, Katju condemned the Mumbai terror
attacks, and called on CICA to renew its 2002 call to
eliminate terrorism, urging zero tolerance and a regional
approach to fighting the common enemy -- extremists.


5. (SBU) Turkish delegate Omer Burhan Tuzel, after echoing
calls for CICA to move from documents to action, announced
(or more accurately, confirmed the February 13 announcement
made in a letter between President Gul and President
Nazarbayev) that Turkey had considered the April 2008 letter
from President Nazarbayev asking for it to become Chair of
CICA, and that it would be willing to do so, beginning with
the 2010 summit in Beijing. Tuzel added that formally all
Turkey was doing was putting forward its candidacy, and he
invited other interested states, in the name of transparency,
to nominate themselves. After a short discussion, it was
agreed that the CICA Secretariat would ask for other
candidates to identify themselves by May 1, and should no one
else come forward, on that date Turkey's approval would
become automatic.


6. (C) In a side meeting with Poloff, Tuzel stated that
Turkey envisions a more ambitious chairmanship of CICA than
the group had in the past. Turkey believes CICA can benefit
by greater interaction with western countries, and would
welcome the U.S. (and he also mentioned Japan) to use its
prerogative to speak as an observer at future events. Tuzel
will also seek opportunities for more substantive political
issues to be discussed in future CICA meetings; not to raise
controversy, he said, but to bring important issues to the
table. Tuzel, the Head of Department for OSCE, Arms Control
and Disarmament in Turkey's MFA, said he is interested in
more political-military issues being discussed, and stated he
sees the OSCE as a model that CICA could take on for Asia.
CICA should not try to replace other Asian fora, he
explained, but could do a much better job of complementing
existing groups. Tuzel said he will be looking for signals
from the new Obama administration as to how U.S. foreign
policy in Asia will shape up, then will analyze how CICA
might fit in. He believed that by having a country other
than Kazakhstan -- and not just necessarily Turkey -- take
over the CICA chairmanship, CICA will become stronger, and
will no longer be perceived as "just a Kazakh pet project."


7. (SBU) Several other delegations made statements similar to
Yermekbayev's, with the Russians, Koreans, Israelis and
Azerbaijanis all imploring CICA to focus more on substantive
and action items. The Chinese delegation reminded the
committee that Beijing will host the next SWG/SOC in October.


8. (SBU) In his report, Executive Director Dulat Bakishev
highlighted the work the CICA secretariat had taken to amend
draft protocols to CICA rules of procedure and discussed
several other in-house measures aimed at strengthening CICA's
procedural processes. But by noting that the Conference
still suffers from a lack of voluntary contributions from
members, as well as reporting "that there has been no real
forward movement in the last six months towards the
implementation of Confidence Building Measures," (with one
exception),the Executive Director's report also exposed one
of CICA's biggest criticisms (described in reftel) -- that
CICA is still in its infancy, focused more on structural
issues than substantive actions.

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9. (SBU) The SOC meeting ended with the consideration of two
main business items. First, the group adopted a concept
paper on "Cooperation Among the CICA Member States in the
Area of Tourism," a rather general document whose purpose is
to "provide ground for adoption of an Action Plan which will
reflect concrete events." Second the SOC announced it had
agreed to all nineteen of the SWG's recommendations, the bulk
of which seemed to focus mostly on agreeing to look at
further studies and follow-up reports, as well as address
some of the Secretariat's operating needs. In bringing the
meeting to a close, Yermekbayev went over the CICA calendar
for the remainder of 2009, highlighting the next SWG in
Almaty in June, and the SOC in China in October.
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