Kazakhstan condemns North Korea's nuclear test

Kazakhstan has condemned North Korea’s attempts to obtain nuclear weapon, Tengrinews reports citing the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Kazakhstan.

Today, January 6, North Korea declared that it had successfully tested a small hydrogen bomb. The international community is skeptical about the claim and it is yet to be checked whether it was a hydrogen bomb or not. But if confirmed, it would place North Korea among nuclear countries.

Hydrogen, or thermonuclear bombs (H-bombs) are one of the types of warheads that comprises nuclear arsenals. Hydrogen bombs are even more powerful then atomic bombs.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Kazakhstan, the Central Asian country that willingly gave up the world’s fourth largest nuclear arsenal that it inherited from the Soviet Union and is known for its nonproliferation stance, released a statement strongly condemning the test.

“Kazakhstan considers North Korea’s actions unacceptable and strongly condemns the violation of the UN Security Council’s resolutions 1718 (2006), 1874 (2009), 2087 (2013) and 2094 (2013),” Kazakhstan said.

“Being a co-chair (together with Japan) of the ninth Article XIV Conference on Facilitating Entry into Force of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, Kazakhstan believes that these actions of North Korean leaders inflict a serious damage to the disarmament efforts of the international community, strengthening of the non-proliferation regime and global security in general, they undermine the efforts of the majority of world countries to facilitate entry into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty,” Kazakhstan’s statement said.   

Kazakhstan has a long history of nuclear weapon tests and sufferings. It has experienced on itself the horrors of the deadly nature of nuclear weapons – Soviet Union was for many years using its territory to test nuclear weapons at the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site. So, among the first things that Kazakhstan did after gaining Independence in 1991 was to renounce possession of nuclear weapons at its own free will. Later in 2009 it initiated the UN resolution that declared August 29 the International Day against Nuclear Tests to commemorate the closure of the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site on 29 August 1991.

Kazakhstan advocates total ban on nuclear tests in the world and calls North Korea to give up its nuclear ambitions and immediately restart six-party nuclear disarmament talks with China, Russia, the USA, South Korea and Japan.

“We are convinced that security and sustainable development can be achieved not through possessing nuclear arsenals, but through broad mutually beneficial cooperation, and that all the problems in state-to-state relations can be resolved through negotiations. The seal of global security is to rid the world of nuclear weapons, which is what our country and its president Nursultan Nazarbayev have been consistently calling for. Nazarbayev was the one who called to make building the world without nuclear weapons the main goal of humanity in the 21st century,” the statement said.

By Tatyana Kuzmina