Nuclear Non-Proliferation
"The damage on our environment has been so serious that scientists believe it will take centuries to restore to normality."From 2009 Kazakhstan speech, following the 20th anniversary of the final test of 456 which had taken place between 1949 and 1989 on the flat lands of northern Kazakhstan, site of Soviet nuclear tests, 116 of which were above ground.
The area is home to 1.5-million people. The environmental degradation that it suffered as a result of all those nuclear tests will not be readily restored by nature. And Kazakhstan, declaring its sovereignty after the fall of the Soviet Union, had no wish to be involved in ongoing nuclear tests. The nuclear arsenal that had been assembled on its geography represented a burden it no longer wanted.
The country willingly surrendered its nuclear stockpile consisting once of 1,000 strategic nuclear warheads and 370 nuclear-tipped cruise missiles. Kazakhstan does not treasure memory of its legacy as a nuclear weapons test site when it was a satellite state of the Soviet Union. At the time of its declared independence it represented the world's first Muslim nuclear power.
A distinction it was eager to shed. Kazakhstan asked for assistance in divesting itself of an inheritance it had no interest in supporting. By 1995 it had transferred its warheads to Russia. The United States assisted in the removal of highly enriched uranium stocks from a secret Soviet-constructed facility.
Kazakhstan divulged that it had been approached by Iran, by the PLO's Yasser Arafat, by Pakistan and Libya, but it steadfastly refused co-operation on the transfer of nuclear technology. It had been rumoured, but there was no evidence to support those rumours that Iran had succeeded in obtaining components for nuclear weapons production from Kazakhstan.
The country has offered to host a nuclear fuel bank to be operated under the auspices of the International Atomic Energy Agency. And though it is not involved in talks with Iran, the country's commercial capital, Almaty is the venue for talks between Iran and six world powers - the five permanent UN Security Council members, plus Germany, on Tehran's nuclear program.
When, needless to say, the Islamic Republic of Iran will once again engage in obfuscation, opaquely nebulous promises, hedges for time, and run cleverly manipulative rings around the naively trustful 5+1.
Labels: Controversy, Iran, Nuclear Technology, Russia, United Nations
posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, February 27, 2013
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