Kazakhstan set example of peaceful voluntary disarmament, Rice says

Harvard's scholar shares view, urges U.S. legislators to support cooperation with Kazakhstan

WASHINGTON, January 23 - The example of Kazakhstan and other nations that have behaved responsibly and are committed to disarmament and nonproliferation should be held up high, while "Iraq's behavior could not offer a starker contrast", national security advisor Condoleezza Rice said in an op-ed in the New York Times on January 23.

Kazakhstan and Ukraine demonstrated a "pattern of cooperation when they decided to rid themselves of the nuclear weapons, intercontinental ballistic missiles and heavy bombers inherited from the Soviet Union," she wrote. "With significant assistance from the United States - warmly accepted by both countries - disarmament was orderly, open and fast... In one instance, Kazakhstan revealed the existence of a ton of highly enriched uranium and asked the United States to remove it, lest it fall into the wrong hands," she noted.

Her views resonate well within the think-tank community. In a recent Op-Ed in the Christian Science Monitor, Harvard's Dr. Brenda Shaffer contrasted Kazakhstan with Iraq and North Korea and said, "during the first part of the last decade, the Republic of Kazakhstan voluntarily surrendered its Soviet-era nuclear weapons for demolition". After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Kazakhstan inherited more than 1,100 nuclear warheads, along with more than one hundred SS-18 missiles, what constituted the 4th largest nuclear arsenal in the world.

"However, it received little recognition or security compensation for the risk it took in order to improve regional security and ensure that these weapons would not fall into other hands," contended Dr. Shaffer, research director of the Caspian Studies Program at the Kennedy's School of Government.

"In the past year, the US has invested millions of dollars in a futile effort to show a friendly face to the masses in the Arab world. Yet Washington invests only minimal funds toward developing cooperation with the pro-Western Muslims of Central Asia and the Caucasus," she wrote.

A number of countries in Central Asia and the Caucasus have also been extremely cooperative with the US in its war on terrorism.

"Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan have foiled attempts by neighboring Middle Eastern countries to obtain materials, knowledge, and the assistance of individuals to advance their efforts in obtaining weapons of mass destruction. Generous steps by these Muslim-populated states have gone largely unrecognized, although they run the risk of offending their Middle Eastern neighbors," said Dr. Shaffer.
As such, Kazakhstan and its neighbors deserve support for their efforts, she contended. Hence, "US legislators should support programs that build cooperation with US friends in the Muslim world, such as in Central Asia and the Caucasus".

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