By IRNA
Berlin : US Senator John McCain who is the front-runner for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, has called off his attendance at the 44th Munich Conference on Security Policy, due to take place in Munich from February 8 to 10, the organizer of the confab Horst Teltschik said Thursday.
He added that McCain’s election team believed that the Republican presidential candidate should continue to focus on the primaries in the US states.
McCain is on the verge of securing the Republican nomination following his victory in the crucial ‘Super Tuesday’ coast-to-coast voting.
Meanwhile, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan will officially open the Munich security meeting.
The general theme of the conference will be “a world in disorder” with shifting positions of power.
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung will also address the conference.
Two heads of states, 25 defense ministers and 15 foreign ministers are slated to discuss pressing global issues like Afghanistan, the future role of NATO, current crisis hot spots, Asia, Russia, the Balkan region and disarmament.
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Mohamed ElBaradei is also expected to attend the Munich conference.
Other invitees include US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, deputy Russian Prime Minster Sergei Ivanov and NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer.
The high profile security conference which is widely seen as the top annual gathering of political movers and shakers on global strategic issues, is being financed by the German government.
The Munich security conference has also been the scene of violent anti-US protests by mainly radical leftist, anarchist, student and labor groups in recent years.