Four of the five Central Asian presidents arrived in Baku on Wednesday evening for the seventh CICA summit, by the readouts of their own offices and of Azerbaijan’s. Kassym-Jomart Tokayev was met at the airport by Deputy Prime Minister Samir Sharifov, Akorda said through Kazinform, and Emomali Rahmon and Sadyr Japarov followed within two hours by Khovar’s and 24.kg’s accounts. Ilham Aliyev received Shavkat Mirziyoyev at 20:40 Baku time and Rahmon at 22:05, by president.az.
The forum they came for is a Kazakh creation. CICA, the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia, was Kazakhstan’s initiative of 1992, and its founding documents are the Declaration of Principles of 14 September 1999 and the Almaty Act. Kazakhstan’s foreign ministry is their depositary and the secretary general, Kairat Sarybay, is a Kazakh diplomat, according to the Azerbaijani foreign ministry’s account of Wednesday’s accession ceremony for Laos, which Report, the Baku agency, carried.
Azerbaijan has chaired it for the past two years. By CAW’s reading, Baku is using the closing summit as Turkmenistan used Avaza last week: as a stage on which the region’s presidents gather in a capital that is neither Moscow nor Astana.
Kazakhstan’s foreign ministry is their depositary and the secretary general, Kairat Sarybay, is a Kazakh diplomat, according to the Azerbaijani foreign ministry’s account of Wednesday’s accession ceremony for Laos, which Report, the Baku agency, carried.
The Senior Officials Committee met under Azerbaijani chairmanship on 14 October and agreed the draft decisions and statements for the summit, covering the chairmanship’s two years, the future directions of cooperation and the organisation’s internal arrangements, the foreign ministry said through Report at 17:24. Asia-Plus wrote on Thursday morning that a Baku declaration is expected.
Laos signed the 1999 declaration and the Almaty Act on Wednesday in a ceremony with Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov, Laotian Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Thongsavanh Phomvihane, Sarybay and a representative of Kazakhstan’s foreign ministry as depositary. Once the summit approves the step, the membership reaches 29, Report wrote.
The guest list reaches beyond the region. Aliyev received Israel’s president at 19:30, a member of the Politburo of China’s Communist Party at 19:10, Vietnam’s vice president and the foreign ministers of Bahrain and Sri Lanka in the same hour, and Qatar’s emir arrived at 19:35, by president.az and Report.
Bayramov met Wang Yi at 08:47 on Thursday, Report’s feed shows. Turkey’s foreign ministry said in a release of 14 October that Hakan Fidan attends on behalf of President Erdogan, and News.am reported on Wednesday afternoon that Sergei Lavrov was to leave for Azerbaijan.
For the Central Asian four the summit is their third joint appearance in eight days. On 8 October the five Central Asian presidents and Aliyev signed two documents at the consultative meeting at Avaza, a joint statement and a decision on the format’s governing documents, and Aliyev told the meeting that Azerbaijan’s trade with Central Asia had grown 50% last year, a figure he gave without a base, and that more than 400 Azerbaijani companies worked in the region. The format’s next meeting was set for Azerbaijan in 2027.
On 9 October the same five attended the CIS Council of Heads of State at the same resort. Baku now hosts four of them in a forum of its own chairing, with no CIS frame around the table.
The bilateral readouts carry no sums. Aliyev and Mirziyoyev discussed the further development of their strategic partnership and alliance, noted growth in trade since the start of the year without a figure, and recorded the successful implementation of projects in energy, mutual investment and construction, by the readout Report carried at 21:59 Baku time. Aliyev and Rahmon exchanged views on deepening multilateral cooperation and on cooperation within regional and international organisations, APA reported at 22:15.
Mirziyoyev congratulated Aliyev on Azerbaijan’s CICA chairmanship and on the summit, the same readout says. Aliyev recalled his state visit to Uzbekistan in August.
Turkmenistan has announced no delegation. Neither the foreign ministry’s news list nor the state portal carried a Turkmen presence in Baku by 08:15 Moscow time on Thursday, when the ministry’s latest items were still Wednesday’s UNESCO seminar in Jakarta and Rashid Meredov’s meeting with the EU special representative.
Armenia, which is not a CICA member, enters through a video. On the eve of the summit Nikol Pashinyan set out on Facebook the peace he wants once the agreement with Azerbaijan is signed and ratified: an Armenia of the same 29,743 square kilometres it counts today, the enclaves on both sides exchanged for land of equal size and every road open. His contacts with Aliyev in Turkmenistan, he said, had left him with the preliminary impression that such a peace is possible.
What the summit adopts is a document of a forum, and CICA’s declarations are political texts, not treaties. The day’s measure is who came: four presidents from Central Asia, Wang Yi and Fidan, Lavrov if News.am’s report holds, the emir of Qatar and the president of Israel in one hall, with Azerbaijan in the chair and Kazakhstan’s seal on the founding acts.
The summit’s documents, agreed by the officials on Wednesday, are published on Thursday: the declaration, the decisions on the organisation and, if the chair changes hands, the name of the next host.