Iranian-Kazakh presidents meet in Istanbul

Istanbul, June 8, IRNA – Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his Kazakh counterpart Nursultan Nazarbayev met and conferred here on Monday evening on issues of mutual interest as well as the regional issues and developments.

President Ahmadinejad left Tehran for Ankara, Turkey, Monday to attend the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) to start in the Turkish capital city on Tuesday.

In addition, the presidents of Azerbaijan, Syria and Afghanistan, Ilham Aliyev, Bashar al-Assad and Hamid Karzai respectively, as well as Palestinian Autonomy Head Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister of Russia Vladimir Putin have taken part in the two-day CICA Conference.

A number of representatives from the US, Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Ukraine and Qatar as well as envoys from the United Nations (UN) are also present at the conference.

Turkish President Abdullah Gul is to chair the CICA Conference.

CICA was first established in the early 1990s by Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, whose country hosted the only two previous summits, the last one four years ago./end