On 6-7 September 2013 the OSCE Academy hosted the 6th annual two-day meeting of international experts on Central Asian security. The event gathered over twenty distinguished regional and international policy analysts and scholars from Central Asian states, Afghanistan, USA, Russia and Europe working on various aspects of security issues in Central Asia its neighborhood. The First Deputy Prime Minister of the Kyrgyz Republic Djoomart Otorbaev delivered an opening keynote speech and addressed the questions ahead of the panel discussions.
The seminar discussions covered a range of topics on international and intraregional security dynamics, with the purpose of mapping the current and expected security trends in Central Asia in 2013 and beyond and discussing the contours of the key policy recommendations for relevant national and international actors.
In particular, the issues related to political and security transition in Afghanistan in the context of the 2014 NATO withdrawal; assessment of current relations between the U.S.A. and Central Asia, especially in the context political; issues related to the current state of Russian foreign policy towards Central Asian states, and the Central Asian perspectives on engagement with Russia, with particular focus on regional initiative such as the Russia-Belarus-Kazakhstan Customs Union; issues related to the state of Chinese-Central Asian relations in the context of the changing political leadership in Beijing and its engagement with Moscow and Washington; the key issues of concern in relations among Central Asian states with the focus on particular developments in 2012-13.
The seminar has been running since 2008 and is a unique forum for representatives of Central Asian, European, Russian, and other policy and scholarly communities who work on matters related to comprehensive security in Central Asia.
The seminar is hosted and organized by the OSCE Academy in Bishkek jointly with the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs and the Near East-South Asia Strategic Studies Center (Washington D.C.). The seminar follows the Chatham House Rule and the summary of discussion will be published as in the Geneva Paper series by the GSCP.
The seminar programme and the list of participants can be downloaded here. The programmes and summaries of the seminar in previous years can be accessed at http://osce-academy.net/en/dialogue/annual-seminar/