Kazakh capital hosted C5+1 High Level Meeting
Minister of Foreign Affairs of Kazakhstan Beibut Atamkulov, Deputy Chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers and Minister for Foreign Affairs of Turkmenistan Raşit Meredow, foreign ministers of Kyrgyzstan Chingiz Aidarbekov, Tajikistan – Sirodjidin Mukhriddin, Uzbekistan – Abdulaziz Kamilov and the U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs David Hale participated in the event, the press service of the Kazakh MFA says.
Addressing the participants, Beibut Atamkulov noted Kazakhstan’s interest in quality implementation of all the initiatives and agreements reached as a result of bilateral and multilateral interaction of the region’s countries.
Further expansion of trade ties, attraction of investments and implementation of multilateral economic projects in the region were on agenda of the C5+1 meeting. The participants expressed interest in joint development of infrastructure and transit-transport potential of Central Asia.
As for security issues, the participants debated a wide range of challenges and threats, solution of which requires a regional approach. These are the issues of contribution to the restoration of Afghanistan as well as exchange of experience in repatriation and rehabilitation of the nationals evacuated from the combat areas of Syria and Iraq.
The C5+1 format serves as a multilateral mechanism of interaction between the five Central Asian countries and the U.S. The dialogue focuses on economic development, regional cooperation and security issues. The first meeting with the participation of the foreign ministers of six countries was held on November 1, 2015 in Samarkand.
