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Syria, Ukraine, Iran to be discussed at Munich Security Conference

MUINICH, January 31, 7:32 /ITAR-TASS/. The settlement of the crisis in Syria, the Iranian nuclear programme and cybersecurity will be high on the agenda of the 50th Munich Security Conference to begin on Friday, January 31.

Some 20 heads of state and government, more than 50 foreign and defence ministers, entrepreneurs, scientists, and human rights activists from around the world will attend the forum. Russia will be represented by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

Other participants will include U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, and the Joint Special Envoy of the United Nations and the League of Arab States for the Syrian Crisis, Lakhdar Brahimi.

The German government will be represented by Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen.

The situation in Ukraine is one of the issues to be discussed at the conference. Those invited to the forum are acting Ukrainian Foreign Minister Leonid Kozhara, who will meet with the Russian foreign minister and the U.N. Secretary-General on February 1 to discuss ways to settle the crisis in Ukraine, and Vitali Klitschko, leader of the opposition UDAR (Punch) party.

The participants in the conference will also review the state of and prospects for the development of trans-Atlantic relations and energy security.

A “historical” discussion is scheduled to take place with former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. In 1963, both politicians attended the first “Internationale Wehrkunde-Begegnung” (the forerunner of the present conference).

The conference was founded in 1962 by German publisher Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist-Schmenzin. Since 1999, it has been attended by politicians and military officials from Central and Eastern Europe as well as entrepreneurs.

In 2007, Russian President Vladimir Putin addressed the Conference with a speech on the role and place of Russia in the world.

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FACTBOX: Collective Security Treaty Organization

The Collective Security Treaty came into force on April 20, 1994 to herald the emergence what would eventually become the Collective Security Treaty Organization. The six member-countries are Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan

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