Israel standoff clouds Turkey Asia summit

The third summit meeting of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia CICA,to be attended by heads of state,heads of governments,and senior ministers from the 20-member states,begins in Istanbul on Monday under the shadow of the acute diplomatic discord between host and chair,Turkey,and a key member country,Israel. A day before the summit,the Turkish coordinator of the summit,Ambassador Unal Celikoz of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,confirmed that there had been no confirmation from Israel of either their participation or the level at which Israel might be represented.

CICA is a multinational forum for enhancing cooperation towards peace,security and stability in Asia and was set up at the initiative of Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev in 1992. Apart from Kazakhstan,Turkey and Israel,India,Pakistan,Russia,Iran,China and Afghanistan are also members. The first heads of state/government summit meeting in Almaty in June 2002 was dominated by the serious tension between India and Pakistan in the aftermath of Parliament attack in 2001. The summit was attended by the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf. Vajpayee had delivered a strong speech asking Pakistan to stop cross-border terror and Russian president Vladimir Putin made a failed attempt to get the two countries to talk under Russias aegis.

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However,the India-Pakistan issue is likely to be well off the radar this time. The Turkish government,which takes over the chairmanship of CICA from Kazakhstan at this summit,has said that it wants the summit to focus on Afghanistan and Gaza. However,Israels attack on an aid flotilla heading to Gaza on May 31,which resulted in the death of nine Turks,seems set to be the focus now.

Turkey has been gripped by mass protests against Israel,and some of the protest meetings have been addressed by senior government ministers,including Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The events of the last week are set to dash Turkeys attempt to play an honest broker in the Middle East. Turkeys mildly Islamist government has had excellent ties with Israel over the past seven years,until last week,and had in 2008 brokered talks between Israel and Syria.

The standoff between Turkey and Israel is a litmus test for the effectiveness of CICA,which was set up as an Asian counterpart of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe OSCE. The government of Turkey was non-committal on whether it would push for a CICA resolution condemning Israel.