Moscow, June 04: Russian President Vladimir Putin has arrived in Kazakhstan to attend a regional summit due to start today, his press office said.
Putin, who arrived in Kazakh economic capital Alamty late yesterday, is to have a series of talks with Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf later today in a bid to ease tensions between the two nuclear rivals. The Conference on Interaction and Confidence building measures in Asia (cica) will bring together 16 Asian nations and is the brainchild of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who called for its creation in a speech to the United Nations in October 1992.
The conference comes as a tailor-made opportunity to defuse the tensions between India and Pakistan, having been conceived as a forum for discussing regional stability and security with an emphasis on terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.
In his efforts, Putin will have the support of Chinese President Jiang Zemin whose country is a traditional ally of Pakistan because of its own antagonism with India.

On the other hand, Moscow which is India's main arms supplier, has been close to New Delhi since the soviet era.
The 16 CICA members are Afghanistan, Azerbaijan,China, Egypt, India, Iran, Israel, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Pakistan, the Palestinian authority, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkey and Uzbekistan. There are 10 observers including Vietnam, Japan and the United States.

Bureau Report