CICA for applying Covid-19 lessons to advance multilateral cooperation

The Senior Officials' Committee (SOC) meeting of Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) on Friday discussed the regional situation shaped by the Covid-19 pandemic.

The multi-national forum's meeting focused on the application of the experiences learned during the pandemic to advance multilateral cooperation.

State Minister for Foreign Affairs Md Shahriar Alam led the Bangladesh delegation in the online meeting.

The deputy foreign ministers, state ministers, and other senior officials of the 27 CICA members joined the programme.

CICA Secretariat Executive Director Ambassador Kairat Sarybay presented and discussed the report on the implementation of CICA Confidence Building Measures (CBMs) and activities since the last meeting of the SOC held in 17-20 December 2019 in China.

Kazakhstan, the current CICA chair, announced the introduction of a new Confidence Building Measure: "Epidemiological safety, public health and pharmaceuticals."

The SOC tasked the CICA Secretariat to circulate the updated concept paper on the introduction of new CBM to the CICA Catalogue of CBMs and agreed on the adoption of this CBM by December 25 this year.

Bangladesh is the coordinating country for implementing the Confidence Building Measures (CBMs) on "Information Technology" and "Environment" within the CICA framework.

The country recently forwarded its plan of activities for both CBMs – one IT event and four on ecology or environment – which were reflected in the presentation of the CICA draft Plan of Confidence Building Measures for 2021.

Ambassador Kairat Sarybay delivered a presentation of the CICA draft Plan of Confidence Building Measures for 2021, and the SOC approved it.

Also, the SOC agreed to hold the next meetings of the Special Working Group and to review the status of implementation of CBMs in the first half of 2021.