Mr. Chairman,

Let me on behalf of the Republic of Kazakhstan express confidence that under your wise leadership the participants of the Conference would find the optimum and mutually acceptable decisions on the agenda of this meeting. Your Chairmanship at this Conference manifests recognition of the international prestige of Mexico in the sphere of nuclear non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament.

I would also like to thank the Secretary-General of the United Nations, in his capacity as depositary of the CTBT, for convening this meeting. Let me also thank the Government of Japan for the contribution that they have made to this important phase of the Article XIV process. We should also like to place on record our appreciation to the Under-Secretary-General, Jayantha Dhanapala for his efforts and to Executive Secretary Ambassador Wolfgang Hoffman for his leadership of the Commission.

Mr. Chairman,

The current session proceeds under the extreme conditions when the entire world has not recovered yet from a shock after the horrendous in the world history terrorist actions in New York and Washington. Today we witnessed another air crash resulted in human losses. I want once again from this high tribune to express to the people and government of the USA our deep solidarity and to confirm determination of Kazakhstan to support global coalition against terrorism. The tragic events of September 11 have once again confirmed that creation of the universal international mechanism to counteract existing and new challenges is possible only under condition of complete and effective participation of all States in this process.

Mr. Chairman,

This Conference is an important event in terms of our common efforts to achieve the goal of the CTBT entry into force and to inject greater vitality into the CTBT process. We have gathered here in New York to assess the implementation of decisions made at the first Conference on Facilitating the Entry into Force of the CTBT two years ago and to estimate prospects of establishing a strong regime of prohibition of nuclear explosions and reduction of nuclear threat.

It is obvious that the existing international regimes of non-proliferation and disarmament should play a complementary role. The entry into force of the CTBT will let the Treaty to fulfill the function of a basic element of the mechanism of global, security alongside with the NPT and create the effective preconditions for the subsequent elimination of the nuclear weapons and also all kinds of the weapons of mass destruction. In this regard we welcome the ratification of the CTBT by the Russian Federation and call all other key states to prove their aspiration to contribute to the process of nuclear disarmament. We believe that such measures will become a major aspect of maintaining the international security and strengthening of trust at a global level.

Mr. Chairman,

Proceeding from the necessity to fully strengthen the non-proliferation regime, Kazakhstan signed the Comprehensive-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) in September, 1996 and continues to make practical contributions to efforts to enhance the effectiveness of the monitoring in compliance with the CTBT.

In this regard I would like to refer to the Note by the Secretary-General contained in the document A/55/433 entitled "Cooperation between the United Nations and the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban-Treaty". I quote "At the invitation of the Republic of Kazakhstan, an on-site inspection experiment was conducted at the former Semipalatinsk Test Side from 1 to 11 October 1999. A scenario was developed, covering the request, notification and conduct of the on-site inspection, based on a 100 tonne non-nuclear explosion for calibration purposes in a tunnel in the Degelen Mountain. The inspection team consisted of 12 participants from China, France, Israel, Kazakhstan, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the USA. The experiment was very successful in exploring techniques and methodologies for the initial on-site period. The problems encountered and the lessons learned are useful resources for developing procedures for the Operational Manual, future field experiments and exercises and operational testing" unquote.

Nowadays there are 4 seismic stations in the territory of Kazakhstan, besides the Center for processing special seismic information has been created in Almaty. It carries out functions of the National Data Center that provides the International Data Center in Vienna with the special seismic information in a real time regime.

The infrastructure of the former Semipalatinsk Test Site allows implementation of projects related to the CTBT, thus transferring the test site into an international peace ground and "a neutral strip" for resolving sensitive problems of the nuclear countries activity in the field of nuclear non-proliferation.

Mr. Chairman,

During the Cold War period the degree of a saturation of my country by military equipment was enormous. We occupied the fourth place in the world by holding nuclear weapons. In accordance with 1995 data, quantity of nuclear warheads, deployed in Kazakhstan, exceeded the amount of nuclear warheads, charges and bombs of Great Britain, France and China taken together.

But we realized that preservation of the nuclear weapons by Kazakhstan could become a powerful impulse for the proliferation of the weapons of mass destruction. In this circumstances we made our choice that was based not only on military and political reasons, but also on the logic of historical development of the Kazakh people, in favor of exempting from a nuclear heritage. It is just because of this choice the CTBT has been just ratified by the Lower Chamber of the Parliament of Kazakhstan.

Mr. Chairman,

Declared Kazakshtan a non-nuclear state, we have not become a merely detached observer of the process of maintaining nuclear security. Our experience during 10 years of independence has allowed generating our own point of view on problems of global security. We consider that a principle of expansion and strengthening of trust between States becomes a major aspect of maintenance of the international security, including in the nuclear field. It is just this principle should replace a prevailing till now principle of military restraint. Nowadays this principle has passed successful approbation within the framework of "Shanghai-5" and is being realized in activities of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The other point is that the global security can be reached only through multilateral and collective efforts. These two universal approaches to draw up the system of global security in the new century - trust and collective efforts of all countries - are especially topical in terms of eliminating nuclear threat. We appeal to Member States sign and ratify the Treaty; particularly those states that identified by the Treaty's Annex II.

Mr. Chairman,

In September this year the Parliament of Kazakhstan adopted the appeal to Parliaments and Governments all over the world to take real steps aimed at eliminating nuclear weapons, distributed as a document A/C.1/56/5 of the fifty-sixth session of the General Assembly. I would like to call all participants of the international community to show political will, take concrete actions and join efforts in achieving our common goal - creation of a non-nuclear world.

Thank You for your attention.
 
 

Sources

• http://www.un.org/webcast/ctbt/statements/kazakhstanE.htm