Official Statements:

Statement

by the Deputy Foreign Minister of the Republic of Kazakhstan N.Yermekbayev at the High

Reflection Group Meeting for the Preparation of the Forum “Common World: progress through diversity”

2-3 April, 2008, Astana, Republic of Kazakhstan

Distinguished participants!

It is a great honor for me to welcome you in Astana.

We appreciate that you accepted our invitation to visit Kazakhstan and to take part in the High Reflection Group Meeting for preparing the Forum of Ministers of Foreign Affairs of Muslim and Western countries - “Common World: progress through diversity”.

As the host country, we thought of arranging this meeting so that it may provide you with most comfort and ambiance to facilitate fruitful discussions. Also, we offer you the tours of our capital city, which in the current year marks its 10-th anniversary and currently undergoes rapid growth and development.

At the same time, we regard your arrival in Kazakhstan as the proof of your concerns about peace; the need to work out joint actions; search of effective actionable decisions, which would help the Muslim world and West overcome modern challenges, confrontation and, to hold on to the path of mutual understanding and co-operation. You have much experience and expertise in issues that we will discuss, whereas - we have much intention to resolve them.

This is utterly important for us, Kazakhstan’s citizens, as we lived under the totalitarian regime and our land suffered from nuclear weapons testing. The territory of our country was used as a testing site for different sorts of ‘social’ experiments, which resulted in massive human loss and degradation of our environment.

To this effect, our history seems to have shaped Kazakhstan’s foreign policy, to a certain extent. The Republic, from the moment it obtained independence, has been consistently putting forward the initiatives aimed at developing good neighborliness, co-operation, maintenance of regional and comprehensive Asian security. The CIS, EurAsEC, SCO, CICA, the Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions as well as a number of other related initiatives define our preferences and approaches in developing our international relations.

For us, the principle of tolerance is a norm of political culture, an inalienable part of our public policy. From this particular stance, in 2010, upon assuming Kazakhstan’s chairmanship in the OSCE, we plan including as prime items into the OSCE’s agenda the issues pertaining to tolerance and maintenance of efforts in combating all forms of discrimination and of mutual adaptation of cultures.

The subject matter of the coherence and responsibility of our policy in frame of the process of inter-civilization dialogue is in having the messages of spiritual leaders, voiced at the Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions, of which the second meeting was held in September 2006, heard at political level by leaderships of countries.         

To this end, the Head of our State first spoke about the initiative on setting up the dialogue between the Muslim world and West, of which the main idea has been discussed by him and found support of the US President George Bush, during the visit of President Nursultan Nazarbayev to the U.S.A in 2006. Likewise, the idea was supported by the then UK Prime-Minister Toni Blair as well as the heads of Brazil, Spain and other states.

As per the Muslim world, the readiness to back up the initiative was spelled out by the leaders of Egypt, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. Moreover, Kazakhstan’s initiative has gained support and understanding of 57 member states of the Organization of Islamic Conference; this was reflected in the final communiqués of the Ministerial Meeting of the Islamic Conference held on 17 May 2007 in Islamabad and the 11th Summit of the Islamic Conference in Dakar held on 13-14 March this year. Based on the above ground, the OIC’s Secretary General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu has started his involvement in promoting the Forum and conceptually filling in its frame.

Similarly, the Forum has been fully supported by the High Representative of the UN Secretary General on the inter-civilization dialogue J.Sampayo.

The main aim of the Forum is thought to be the practical, action-oriented discussion at political level of approaches of parties to the themes relating to international relations, modernization, economic co-operation, mutual adaptation of cultures and analysis of the role of mass media in the process, which supplements the dialogue of religious leaders.

It is worth noting that such political dialogue by way of projecting its idea is in close proximity to that of the Alliance of Civilizations, which aims at mobilizing collective political will for bridging gaps and growing mistrust between civilizations, cultures and societies and settles mutual understanding between them. And still there is a specific distinction in Kazakhstan’s initiative, which is as follows.

 Firstly, it considers the concrete mechanism of the dialogue, namely, the meeting at the level of foreign ministers of Muslim countries and West or the political dialogue, in other words.     Secondly, the future Forum will consider the possibility of developing the dialogue of politicians of the two largest civilizations, being the Muslim World and Western countries.

Thirdly, the Forum for the reason of its one time based convocation, should be able to embrace the most acute issues of the interaction between the two ‘poles’ and have certain political arrangements delivered by those two.

The Kazakh party attaches great meaning, within the Forum’s organizational outline, to the issue of ensuring practical outcomes of the event, which are expected to reflect the joint input of Muslim and Western countries into harmonization of international relations; the process of ensuring progress and sustainable development.      

We hope that during our discussions, we would succeed in elaborating certain actionable decisions, which will be then submitted for consideration by foreign ministers.

In effect, the forthcoming foreign ministers’ meeting corresponds to the aims and spirit of the Alliance of Civilizations, being materialized under the UN auspices. It is our view that the October Forum will make up its participants’ contribution into the process, which has expanded globally. If the outcomes of the meeting of heads of foreign offices turn out to be successful, we could bring forward recommendations on holding the Summit of heads of states to come next.      

Distinguished guests,

Today, the ‘social’ value of time has been tightened. Breakthrough in sciences and technology has accelerated these processes. World civilizations have stepped into continual interaction at all levels. This is precisely what defines the super-complex task of maintenance of the inter-civilization dialogue.

Given such background, our common concern is about continually gaining strength by the ‘force factor’ in its wide spreading the set of norms and standards in politics, economy, public management and, most important, in culture. Penetration of the imposed “mass culture,” the so-called “crusade” is being rigorously rejected, elsewhere. This, in the opinion of many culture experts, drives to the erosion of civilization behavioral norms, cultural and moral values.

 Often, the response to such actions is widely increasing resistance, in its radical form, - the call for the jihad. The connotation of the word “jihad” should be apprehended correctly. Under contemporary circumstances, it may be construed as the need to preserve Islamic roots.

We attempted to draw proximity between the agenda and discussions items of today’s meeting and those of the coming Forum. With this motion, we would welcome your valuable comments and suggestions. We believe that the joint consolidated opinion and information about our meeting will be brought to the attention of foreign ministers of the states, participating in our meeting.

The assumption of the political scientist, Huntington, which rests on the clash of civilizations, becomes “a fatal reality,” according to some experts. Concerns are raised around the so-called spiritual expansion. Some cultures are rejected self-identity. Asymmetric response to neo-liberal fundamentalism turns out to be the fundamentalism of terror. Most prominent philosophers of modern world believe that the globalizing world produces terror as its manufacturing item.

At the same time, the issue of adaptation of Muslim minorities in Western societies is most acute. From the other side of the spectrum, we witness the systemic crisis of the European identity and ideas of liberalism. Vision of perspectives of multiculturalism is multi-pronged. For this matter, countries of Europe do resolve the issues of migration and social adaptation of ethnic minorities, single-handedly.

In view of above circumstances, the role of mass media in strengthening of tolerance and overcoming xenophobia is hard to overestimate.

With the development of communication networks, changing is the role and meaning of public movements and non-governmental organizations. In the meantime, evolving and rapidly developing are such new phenomena as public opinion courts via internet and joint ad-hoc actions. On the planet of mass media, manipulations with public consciousness have acquired a universal scale - whereas there are more and more opportunities for new shapes and configurations that define independent and unbiased apprehension of world events to emerge.

At the same time, consistency and fairness are required. When we speak about the need to respect spiritual values of Muslims, the right of a Western society to have its own spiritual and historical values that also require a dignified treatment, should not be forgotten.

However, freedom can hardly go on without responsibility. We stand against advocating the hatred and instigating the violence. Therefore, Kazakhstan generally supports the draft declaration by the High Representative on the Alliance of Civilizations of the UN Secretary General Jorge Sampayo “Call for Respect and Peace,” which condemns the documentary movie produced by the Member of the Parliament of The Netherlands Geert Wilders.

What is the core subject of the contradiction between the two worlds? Will the mutual adaptation of cultures be possible, given the current accelerated pace of social processes? Would it be possible to avoid war of cultures? How can mass media positively and ‘good willingly’ influence interrelationship between the Muslim world and West? What should politicians undertake, additionally, so that mere words and numerous declaratory statements convert into real actions to improve mutual understanding and mutually beneficial co-operation. These issues are direct challenges that require clarity and solvation. The series of negative evolvements is enlarging but, so far, it is under control by public bodies, international organizations and public oversight. However, no one is quite sure of where that line lies beyond which the critical mass will be capable of cutting through the fragile peace, irreversibly disrupt the existing world order and drive it to a chaos.

We would appreciate it if we could be able to fully consult the main items of the joint statement for the October Forum of foreign ministers.   

 Date of issue: 2008-04-02