08/06/2010 President
Third Summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia
Addressing participants at the Third Summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) in Istanbul today, PACE President Mevlüt Çavusoglu made a plea for soft security as a means of strengthening security and stability in a globalised world.
“Peaceful co-existence of different cultures and religions, based on mutual respect, is for me one of the most important elements of this soft security and the strengthening of inter-religious and inter-cultural dialogue is one of the priorities of my presidency,” he stressed.
“Even though it is possible to draw a formal dividing line between the European and Asian continents, in reality such a dividing line does not exist. (…) In the era of globalization, eradicating racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and all kinds of similar phobia leading to discrimination and intolerance should be our common objective,” he said.
The PACE President stressed that by promoting the fundamental values of democracy, human rights and the rule of law, the Council of Europe was helping reinforce the democratic, so-called, soft security on the continent – a field which had a great potential for co-operation between CICA and the Council of Europe. The organisation’s legal instruments, in particular the conventions on the prevention of terrorism and against trafficking in human beings, open to non-member states, represented an excellent basis for concrete co-operation, he added.
Mr Çavusoglu finally recalled the recent creation of the "Partner for democracy" status at PACE level, aimed at strengthening relations with non-member states. “We have received the first official request from Morocco and I hope that the Parliament of Kazakhstan will become our first Partner for democracy on the Asian continent,” he concluded. Kazakhstan, in conjunction with its CICA and OSCE Chairmanships, was demonstrating to Europe and the whole world the growing capacity of Asian countries to assume more and more international responsibilities, he said.