At the outset, I would like to congratulate
Mr. Treki on his election to the high post of President
of the General Assembly at its sixty-fourth session and
wish him every success as he presides over the session.
Eight years ago, on 11 September, Ms. Zhannetta
Tsoy, a citizen of Kazakhstan, having kissed her
daughter and husband, left for her first day at a new job
in New York’s tallest building. Two hours later, she
perished, along with 3,000 Americans and citizens of
other 91 countries. She was buried under the debris of
what had once been the World Trade Centre’s Twin
Towers. On that day, as Kazakhstan’s ambassador in
Washington D.C., along with all Americans and others,
I felt acutely how fragile, vulnerable and
interdependent our world had become. This terrorist act
and the world’s unity in its strict condemnation showed
that only together can we make our present and our
future safer and better. Indeed, the key to the
successful resolution of today’s most acute problems
lies precisely in the world’s unity and understanding.
President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan
and our entire people have supported the global fight
against terrorism from the start by assisting the efforts
of the international coalition in Afghanistan. However,
there has never been and there will never be a purely
military solution to the Afghan problem. We note with
satisfaction that coalition members have begun to pay
more attention to non-military aspects of security.
To the best of its ability, Kazakhstan is also
assisting the international efforts to rehabilitate
Afghanistan. We provide considerable humanitarian aid
to that country. Moreover, we are developing a long-
term educational programme to train qualified Afghan
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specialists, and are also considering other forms of
assistance to that country.
Long-term stability in Afghanistan is impossible
without effective measures to tackle illicit drug
trafficking. The Central Asia Regional Information and
Coordination Centre has been established in Almaty,
with the support of the United Nations, to fight illicit
drug trafficking. As the Chairperson-in-Office of the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
(OSCE) in 2010, I intend to make the stabilization of
the situation in Afghanistan — a regional neighbour of
the OSCE — one of the organization’s greatest
priorities.
The prospect of the proliferation of nuclear
weapons, along with the risk of their acquisition and
use by terrorist organizations, remains one of the most
serious threats to mankind. As a country that has
experienced the horrors of nuclear tests, shut down the
world’s second-largest nuclear testing site, at
Semipalatinsk, and voluntarily renounced the world’s
fourth-largest nuclear and missile arsenal, Kazakhstan
has an absolute moral right to call for more decisive
action in the area of disarmament and for the radical
strengthening of the non-proliferation of weapons of
mass destruction regime. In particular, Kazakhstan
deems it important to ensure the soonest possible entry
into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban
Treaty. We welcome the efforts of United States
President Barack Obama to give new impetus to the
non-proliferation process and to eliminate the nuclear
threat.
Kazakhstan is in favour of strengthening and
ensuring the universality of the Treaty on the
Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). We must
recognize that the Treaty is asymmetric in that it
provides for sanctions only against non-nuclear-
weapon States, whereas the nuclear Powers themselves
should set the example of reducing and renouncing
their nuclear arsenals. In this regard, Kazakhstan
welcomed the unanimous adoption yesterday of
Security Council resolution 1887 (2009) and believes
that this historic decision opens a new era in
humankind’s efforts to create a world without nuclear
weapons. It is gratifying that the measures being
undertaken today by the international community
reflects the principled position that President
Nazarbayev has expressed more than once from this
rostrum and in bilateral meetings with heads of
nuclear-weapon States and of States with nuclear
ambitions.
It is necessary now more than ever to take even
more decisive actions. Our President has proposed the
development of a new universal treaty on
comprehensive horizontal and vertical nuclear
non-proliferation. The configuration of the new treaty
and its contents will largely depend on the proposals of
all interested States. An effective measure to strengthen
the non-proliferation regime could be the establishment
of an international nuclear fuel bank under the auspices
of the International Atomic Energy Commission.
Kazakhstan is ready to consider the possibility of
locating it on our territory.
One important contribution made by Kazakhstan
and other States of Central Asia to the implementation
of the NPT was the entry into force in March of the
Treaty on a Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone in Central
Asia. The peculiarity of the Zone is that it is located
between two of the world’s largest nuclear Powers. The
Zone could play a large practical role in preventing the
uncontrolled proliferation of nuclear materials and in
countering nuclear terrorism. We count on support for
the Central Asian Zone, above all from the nuclear
Powers, including their possible extension of negative
security guarantees. We support the United States of
America’s initiative to convene a global nuclear
security summit next year.
I wish to draw the attention of the General
Assembly to a proposal of the President of Kazakhstan
on declaring 29 August international day for a world
free of nuclear weapons. That date has deep symbolical
meaning. On that day in 1949, the Soviet Union
conducted its first nuclear test at the Semipalatinsk test
site in Kazakhstan, and on the same day in 1991 the
test site was shut down forever by decree of our
Government. We hope that the General Assembly will
support this initiative.
Today, humankind is experiencing the most
serious global financial and economic crisis in decades.
According to the International Monetary Fund,
approximately 50 States have edged to the brink of an
economic catastrophe. At the same time, the present
crisis was largely inevitable. Unfortunately, the world’s
economic development and the great leap forward in
technology over the past 60 years could not solve such
eternal problems as poverty and hunger. The gap
between the rich and the poor continues to grow. More
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than a billion people live on less than $1 a day. Despite
our exceptional achievements in modern science and
medicine, almost 10 million children under five die
every year of curable diseases. More than 30 million
people worldwide live with HIV, while only 3 million
of those have access to antiretroviral therapy.
The economic crisis has forced us to rethink and
revisit many conceptual approaches that earlier seemed
etched in stone. It has demonstrated once again the
urgency of unifying all States’ efforts in addressing
modern challenges. The leader of our country was
among the first to share his vision for the world’s post-
crisis development. He proposed drafting an
international law on a single world currency, and the
eventual establishment of a world emissions centre, a
world anti-monopoly currency committee and a world
committee on market freedom. The United Nations
with its structural bodies and specialized agencies is
the only global organization capable of addressing such
large-scale issues.
At a time of acute social and economic
breakdowns, the danger of inter-ethnic and
inter-religious conflicts increases considerably.
Located at the confluence of Asia and Europe and
having maintained peace and harmony in a multi-ethnic
and multireligious country throughout its years of
independence, Kazakhstan is ready to act as a bridge of
mutual understanding and tolerance between the East
and the West.
As Chair of the OSCE in 2010 and of the 2011
ministerial conference of the Organization of the
Islamic Conference, Kazakhstan is eager fully to use
this unique opportunity to strengthen constructive
cooperation between diverse cultures and civilizations
and to take concrete measures on this issue.
Furthermore, since 2003 our country has hosted three
Congresses of Leaders of World and Traditional
Religions, supported by the United Nations.
At Kazakhstan’s initiative, the General Assembly
adopted resolution 62/90 at its sixty-second session,
declaring 2010 the International Year for the
Rapprochement of Cultures. We call on United Nations
Member States to participate actively in celebrating the
Year. Kazakhstan fully supports the goals of the
Alliance of Civilizations and calls on all Member
States and agencies of the United Nations system to
contribute to strengthening tolerance and mutual
understanding in the world.
In the current circumstances, the regional aspect
of solving global problems takes on added importance.
Our country is firmly committed to the consistent
strengthening of regional cooperation for security and
development in Central Asia. A unique security
architecture is being created in Eurasia, its most
important elements being organizations such as the
OSCE, the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-
building Measures in Asia (CICA), the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization, the Collective Security
Treaty Organization and NATO. In that regard, CICA,
convened as a result of an initiative introduced by
President Nazarbayev from this rostrum in 1992, has
become an effective mechanism for strengthening
regional security and cooperation. In 2010, as our
country takes up the chairmanship of the OSCE, we
intend to work for the good of all its member States to
strengthen the organization’s effectiveness in
addressing new challenges and threats, as well as to
further strengthen confidence-building and security
measures in the Euro-Atlantic community.
In today’s rapidly changing world, the adaptation
of the United Nations to modern realities is an
important task for all Member States. Kazakhstan
supports the reform process for the United Nations and
its main bodies based on the principled position of the
need to increase the effectiveness, authority and
relevance of our global Organization. We are
convinced that there is no alternative to the United
Nations in the modern world, and there never will be.
We support reforms on three principal tracks:
revitalization of the work of the General Assembly,
reform of the Security Council and coherence of the
United Nations system.
Fifty years ago, Martin Luther King Junior said:
“Men often hate each other because they fear
each other; they fear each other because they do
not know each other; they do not know each other
because they cannot communicate; they cannot
communicate because they are separated.”
Regrettably, those words are often true today, but they
should not be so tomorrow. In an age of globalization
and unprecedented interdependence in the world, there
should no longer be mistrust, fear and hatred, but the
principles of trust, understanding and cooperation
should triumph. Only together can we properly address
the difficult challenges facing humankind today and
make our world safer and better.