UN head to discuss cooperation with Kazakh leadership.

7/4 Tass 99

ASTANA, April 7 (Itar-Tass) - UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will
discuss with the Kazakhstani leadership on Wednesday important cooperation
issues, as well as international problems in the context of Kazakhstan's
chairmanship in the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe
(OSCE).
On Tuesday, the UN head's plane landed at Astana airport with an
almost 4-hour delay caused by bad weather conditions in the capital of
Kazakhstan where it was snowing with heavy winds in the afternoon.
Press secretary of the Kazakhstani Foreign Ministry Ilyas Omarov said
that "for several hours the plane was staying at a reserve aerodrome in
Karaganda."
According to him, before arriving in Astana Ban visited the
Semipalatinsk nuclear test range and the museum of the Institute of
Radiation Safety and Ecology of the National Nuclear Centre.
The UN secretary-general plans meetings with Kazakhstani President
Nursultan Nazarbayev, OSCE Chairman-in-Office, Foreign Minister and State
Secretary of Kazakhstan Kanat Saudabayev, the leadership and personnel of
UN structures accredited in Kazakhstan, as well as with representatives of
the People's Assembly of Kazakhstan.
According to a UN press release, the UN secretary-general on April 6
flew to a former ground zero of atom bomb testing in a highly symbolic
gesture to plead for a nuclear weapons-free world on the eve of this week'
s United States-Russian summit to sign a new nuclear arsenal reduction
treaty. In Kazakhstan on the last leg of a five-nation Central Asian tour,
Mr. Ban travelled by helicopter to the remote former Soviet nuclear test
site at Semipalatinsk, where he welcomed President Barack Obama's new
policy on restricting the US use of nuclear weapons as an important
initiative towards a nuclear-free world.
"I cannot think of a more fitting - even poignant - place to hear this
news," he said from the site that had witnessed so many tests of such
enormously devastating power. "More than 450 nuclear bombs were tested
here with a terrible effect on people and nature. They have totally
destroyed our environment; poisoned earth, rivers and lakes, children
suffering from cancer, birth defects." He called Kazakh President
Nursultan Nazarbayev's "extraordinary leadership" in closing the
Semipalatinsk test site and banishing all nuclear weapons in 1991 "a
visionary step, a true declaration of independence.
"Today, this site stands as a symbol of disarmament and hope for the
future: Now we have a good reason to believe that the promise of
Semipalatinsk - the abolition of nuclear weapons - will become reality,"
he said, citing this Thursday's summit in Prague in the Czech Republic,
where Mr. Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev are to sign the
treaty slashing their nuclear arsenals by a third, and the new US nuclear
policy announced today.
"To lead by example, the United States would renounce the development
of new nuclear weapons," he added. "And for the first time, the United
States explicitly committed not to use nuclear weapons against any
non-nuclear nations that are in compliance with the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), even if the United States were attacked."
Mr. Ban said he would use next week's nuclear security summit in
Washington to urge the leaders of Russia, the US and other nuclear States
to abandon all nuclear weapons. "To realize a world free of nuclear
weapons is a top priority of the United Nations and the most ardent
aspiration of human beings," he declared, according to the release.
"Here today in Semipalatinsk, I call on all nuclear weapons States to
follow suit of Kazakhstan. For inspiration, they can look to Kazakhstan.
Kazakhstan has led by example," he added. "As Secretary-General, I will
spare no efforts to realize, together with the whole international
community, a world free of nuclear weapons."
In a statement issued by his spokesperson at UN Headquarters in New
York, Mr. Ban voiced the hope that the new treaty and US policy would keep
up "the recent positive momentum" in the lead up to May's five-year review
conference of the 40-year-old NPT. He has characterized the 2005 review as
"disappointing." Amid widely diverging views on nuclear arms and their
spread, it ended without any substantive agreement being reached.
He recalled the five-point action plan he put forward in 2008 for
nuclear disarmament based on the following key principles: disarmament
must enhance security; be reliably verified; be rooted in legal
obligations; be visible to the public; and anticipate emerging dangers
from other weapons.
The trip to Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and
Kazakhstan is Mr. Ban's first visit to Central Asia since he became the
United Nations chief in January 2007. He began his official visit in
Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, where he toured the UN Regional Centre for
Preventive Diplomacy for Central Asia (UNRCCA) and the National Institute
for Democracy and Human Rights.
The Secretary-General's second stop was in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, where
he addressed the country's Parliament and met President Kurmanbek Bakiyev
and Foreign Minister Kadyrbek Sarbaev.
Mr. Ban then travelled to Uzbekistan to see first hand the effects of
ecological deterioration on the Aral Sea, once the world's fourth-largest
lake. The Secretary-General held talks in Uzbekistan with President Islam
Karimov. The fourth stop of the trip was Dushanbe, Tajikistan.
-0-ezh/gor


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