ICARDA's involvement in Central Asia is growing. It has appointed a local representative. It is now the focal point for a consortium to coordinate CGIAR activities there. And, for the first time, it has played host to scientists from all over the region to set a common research agenda.

am deeply impressed," said Tamar Bessonova, a barley breeder and Chair of the Center for Crop Improvement in Kyrgyzstan.
Dr Bessonova was on her first visit outside her country. She was attending the First Coordination Meeting between ICARDA and the Central Asian Republics (CARs), which was held at ICARDA headquarters in Aleppo, Syria, 12-16 September 1997. Twenty-five senior scientists and managers of agricultural research from the five CARs participated.  And she voiced the sentiments of many of the delegates, for whom seeing ICARDA's research facilities and talking with other scientists, from ICARDA and other CARs, was an important part of the coordination meeting.
"This is an historic moment," said Prof. Dr Adel El-Beltagy, Director General of ICARDA, "as this is the first regional coordination meeting between the key agricultural scientists of the Central Asian Republics and ICARDA... The dream has come true after two years!" The dream being the effective partnership in agricultural research in Central Asia by ICARDA and the national agricultural research systems of the five ex-Soviet CARs, to improve agricultural productivity on a sustainable basis, while protecting the natural-resource base, as these countries move towards economic liberalization.
Giving background to the meeting, Prof. Dr El-Beltagy recalled the two previous meetings that ICARDA had the privilege to organize--one in Tashkent in December 1995, where ICARDA scientists met with the representatives of the NARS in the West and Central Asia region, and the second, the Central Asia NARS/CGIAR Consultation Meeting in September 1996, again in Tashkent. Prof. Dr El-Beltagy said that the dry areas of Central Asia were part of the mandate region of ICARDA, as approved by the Consultative Group on     

International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). So this coordination meeting would permit development of concrete plans for collaborative research between ICARDA and the Central Asian Republics.
The delegations from each of the Central Asian Republics was headed by an eminent scientist: H.E. Deria Karakurdiev, President of the Turkmen Livestock Association, Turkmenistan; Academician Jamin Akimaliev, President of Kyrghyz Agrarian Academy, Kyrghyzstan; Acad. Azimkhan Satybaldin, Director General of NACAR, Kazakstan; Acad. Saidmakhmud Usmanov, Consultant, Uzbekistan Research Insitute of Market Reforms, Uzbekistan; and Acad. B.S. Sanginov, President of the Tajikistan Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Tajikistan.
This meeting brought ICARDA and CAR researchers together to discuss in detail, and develop frameworks for, a number of urgent project proposals--building on priority areas identified in the two earlier meetings--which will be submitted to donors for funding. In the closing session, which was chaired by Prof. Dr El-Beltagy, the main project outlines were presented, and these were developed further over the following weeks.
The meeting played a special role in one particular sense--that of bringing scientists in Central Asia back onto the international circuit. Although agricultural researchers and institutions certainly did not stop work with the break-up of the Soviet Union, formal networks in Central Asia did collapse.  One of the points that delegates were keen to stress was the important bridging role that ICARDA is now playing between the