Kazakhstan's Foreign Minister, Erlan Idrissov, has reiterated his country's role as a global leader in working for the elimination of nuclear weapons.
Participating recently in an informal meeting on the observance of the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, Foreign Idrissov while commending the efforts of the 120 countries of the Non-Aligned Movement and others who supported the resolution to make this Day a reality, said that over the last 23 years, Kazakhstan has championed the cause of ending of the development and testing of nuclear weapons.
"Our weapon has been a mutual trust and respect, transparency and confidence building. We have invested the funds which would have been wasted on maintaining nuclear weapons on improving the lives of our citizens," he said.
He said the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons (August 29) increases public awareness of the risks and impact of nuclear testing and makes political leaders accountable to their commitments.
"Kazakhstan's global advocacy e-campaign, The ATOM Project, is also mobilizing people world-wide to call on their leaders to ban nuclear weapons testing. The movements to ban nuclear tests and ban nuclear weapons are, of course, closely interconnected. We therefore mutually reinforce and combine our synergies to reach Global Zero," Foreign Minister Idrissov said.
Re-emphasizing that Kazakhstan is a strong upholder of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, he said, "We call for all member states to sign and for strong action at the 2015 NPT Review Conference to implement the 64 action points from the 2010 Review Conference."
"The challenge is to enable this expansion while taking the precautionary measures to prevent proliferation... Kazakhstan fully endorses the Secretary General's Five-Point Plan, several multilateral initiatives as well as bilateral actions to make the abolition of nuclear weapons possible," he added.
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"Global nuclear disarmament should include the dismantling of strategic nuclear forces, and their carriers and technologies developed by increasing numbers of countries in different parts of the world. It is clearer than ever that the abolition of nuclear weapons is dependent on the universal ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty," Foreign Minister Idrissov said.
"Like other countries, Kazakhstan is concerned with the delay in negotiations to establish a WMD free zone in the Middle East. We see the establishment of such zones as a crucial building block to making the entire world free of nuclear-weapons," he added.
He concluded by saying that a nuclear weapons-free world requires all member states to adopt new, legally binding instrument to ban the production of fissile material for military purposes and make it priority agenda item of the Conference on Disarmament.