FM on upcoming UNSC meeting with Kazakh President’s participation
"The theme of the Council meeting with the participation of President Nursultan Nazarbayev on January 18 is defined as "Non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD): confidence-building measures". As the temporary UNSC President, Kazakhstan presented the concept of this event that was supported by all Security Council Members. It is based on two documents of the President of Kazakhstan: Manifesto "The World. The 21st Century" and the political address to the UN Security Council titled "Kazakhstan's conceptual vision of strengthening the global partnership for building a safe, just and prosperous world" dated January 6, 2017. The aim is to find political solutions to regional WMD-related conflicts. Moreover, in this context, non-proliferation and confidence-building measures must go hand-in-hand with other political confidence-building measures," Minister Abdrakhmanov told Kazinform.
According to the Kazakh foreign minister, the meeting will address the key non-proliferation issues, but from the different standpoint, i.e. through the lens of strengthening confidence-building measures. As the minister emphasized, Kazakhstan expects the event to help formulate recommendations based on the interdependence of the three themes: "conflict prevention", "non-proliferation" and "confidence-building measures".
"This refers to a wide range of political measures for elimination of incentives to possess WMD and their means of delivery. This includes settlement of protracted conflicts and crises in various regions of the world conditioned by the absence of confidence, for instance, in the Middle East, and the Korean Peninsula. New confidence-building measures could become a part of the non-proliferation process in case the Member States announce the respective specific obligations. The concept intends to improve the dialogue between nuclear and non-nuclear states," Kairat Abdrakhmanov said.
The event is also intended to help universalize the international treaties as a means of strengthening confidence-building measures in the context of non-proliferation, the minister underlined. "This is about the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, the Convention on the Prohibition of Biological and Toxin Weapons, the Chemical Weapons Convention, etc.," he elaborated.