Embassy of Kazakhstan

POLITICS

Security authorities meet in Kazakhstan

United Press International

Top security authorities gathered in Kazakhstan Tuesday for a seminar to address security in Central Asia and the South Caucasus regions.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe is supporting a two-day seminar designed to bring together military and other security experts from Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan among others to discuss and evaluate measures to build security and confidence in the region, the OSCE reported.

Officials say the security authorities will address developments of the defense policy and military activities treaty, the OSCE Vienna Document 1999, among other security topics.

"This seminar is a catalyst for new ideas and will allow for improvements in the fulfillment of commitments made in international treaties and agreements in the area of arms control," said Alexandre Keltchewsky, head of the OSCE Center in Astana, Kazakhstan.

"It also further strengthens confidence- and security-building measures between OSCE participating states, particularly in Central Asia and the South Caucasus."



On the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council Security Forum and Rose-Roth inter-parliamentary Seminar in the Republic of Kazakhstan (Astana, June 24-26, 2009)

Press-release by Kazakhstan’s Foreign Ministry

On June 24-25, 2009 the 3rd Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council (EAPC) Security Forum will be held in Astana.

The idea to host the Forum in the Republic of Kazakhstan was proposed by the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan N.Nazarbayev and was supported by the North-Atlantic Council.

For the first time the EAPC Security Forum will be conducted on the post-soviet territory and Asian continent. Also it will be one of the largest events, hosted in our country in 2009.

The former two Forums were hold in Sweden (Are city) in 2005 and in Macedonia (Ohrid city) in 2007.

The Security Forum is going to be an informal ground for open and free discussions on regional and global security issues. The main idea of the Forum is “Security through Partnership”. During the plenary and thematic sessions of the Forum the broad range of topics will be discussed, including security in Central Asia and Caucasus, situation in Afghanistan and energy security issues.

More than 50 EAPC and NATO member-countries, other states, different international organizations and mass-media representatives will participate in the Forum.

At the same time the NATO Parliamentary Assembly (NATO PA) is planning to organize in Kazakhstan in 2009 the Rose-Roth inter-parliamentary Seminar – the forum of inter-parliamentary dialogue on actual questions of Euro-Atlantic security.

The cooperation between the Republic of Kazakhstan and the NATO was started after Kazakhstan had joined the North-Atlantic Cooperation Council in 1992, and which transformed to the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council (EAPC) in 1997.

In order to develop the political dialogue and military cooperation with the NATO, Kazakhstan has joined “Partnership for peace” (PfP) Program on May 27, 1994.

Currently, the bilateral cooperation with the North-Atlantic Alliance is fulfilling in accordance with the agreements, reached during the negotiations between the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan N.Nazarbayev and the NATO Secretary General J.de Hoop Scheffer in the NATO Headquarters (December 2006), and also in accordance with task of the Head of the State to deepen and intensify the practical cooperation with the NATO.

The collaboration between the Republic of Kazakhstan and the NATO is accomplished within the training and equipping of certain armed forces divisions, particularly “Kazbat”/ “Kazbrig” peacekeeping force, in accordance with the NATO standards;  training of a special rescue crew, which can participate in international rescue and humanitarian operations under the NATO/UN mandate; boundary security cooperation; armed forces reforms and using the NATO potential in science, emergency civil planning, environmental problems solving.

As the NATO Secretary General J.de Hoop Scheffer stated, the Republic of Kazakhstan is a key country in Central Asia for the NATO. Kazakhstan is the only Central-Asian state, with whom the NATO builds relations within the NATO Individual partnership activity plan.



ECONOMY

GE signs $500M locomotive deals in Kazakhstan

Associated Press

General Electric Co.'s transportation arm said Friday it signed a deal for nearly $500 million to maintain locomotives for Kazakhstan's state-owned railway and will invest in a locomotive-assembly plant in the Asian country.

The maintenance deal is for 15 years, and GE said it's the company's largest such contract outside North America. GE Transportation will provide maintenance and overhauls for about 400 locomotives owned by a subsidiary of state-owned Kazakhstan Temir Zholy.

GE and Kazakhstan Temir Zholy also agreed to invest in a plant in Astana, Kazakhstan, where more than 600 workers will assemble GE Evolution Series locomotives.

GE said the 54,000-square-meter plant is expected to begin production by year end and will be capable of turning out about 100 locomotives a year.

The Kazakhstan state railway ordered 310 Evolution Series locomotives in 2006, and 300 will be assembled in the new plant from parts made in Grove City and Erie, Pa., GE said.

GE said it is investing $400 million in the Evolution Series locomotive over eight years. The locomotive has a smaller engine that uses less fuel than its predecessor.

Shares of GE rose 19 cents to $13.38 in afternoon trading.



Cooperation between Kazakhstan Temir Zholy and RZD

Railwaymarket

Railway Market reported that Mr Askar Mamin the president of Kazakhstan Temir Zholy and Mr Valery Reshetnikov VP of Russian Railways signed a memorandum of understanding on joint activities in terminal cargo handling.

The companies are going to increase transit by rail connecting Europe and Asia by launching a through service via Kazakhstan and the Russian Federation and developing one infrastructure for cargo handling.

The document envisages joint management of the terminals in Kazakhstan as well as joint efforts to optimize transit terminal capacities.



Belarus National Exhibition to take place in Kazakhstan

BelTA

Over 130 companies will present their products at the 5th National Exhibition of Belarus in Kazakhstan BelarusEXPO 2009 that is due in Astana on June 3-6, BelTA learnt from the organizing committee.

The exposition will display a wide range of Belarusian industrial and consumer goods. Large expositions will be featured by the Agriculture and Food, Education, Architecture and Construction Ministries, Belneftekhim, Bellegprom and Bellesbumprom concerns, the State Science and Technology Committee, the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus. The total area of the exposition will make up nearly 1,400 square metres.

The programme of the exhibition includes a presentation of Belarus’ sci-tech potential, a roundtable “Cooperation in the transport area”, tasting of the products of the Belgospischeprom and the companies of the Agriculture and Food Ministry, a meeting between businessmen of the two countries.

Kazakhstan ranks third in the foreign trade of Belarus with the CIS behind Russia and Ukraine. The bilateral trade grew from $81 million in 2003 to $537 million in 2008. Belarus exports to Kazakhstan a wide range of industrial and consumer goods including tractors, trucks, agricultural and road equipment, tyres, furniture and household appliances, medications, milk and sugar.

The Belarusian side is interested in the Kazakhstan state and regional programmes on developing agriculture, housing and road construction, engineering industry. Belarusian companies are also keen on cooperation in the fuel, energy and transport spheres.




OTHER NEWS

Kazakhstan: former nuclear test site could be farmed says energy minister

EurasiaNet

One of the world’s most irradiated sites could be returned to economic use, according to a Kazakh government minister.

The Semipalatinsk nuclear site was used for years to test Soviet atomic weapons, but Sauat Mynbayev, the Minister for Energy and Mineral Resources, has called for feasibility studies to determine whether the area can be put to agricultural use. "The former Semipalatinsk nuclear test site covers 300 square kilometers. It’s necessary to determine if the land is now suitable for agricultural purposes," the Kazakhstan Today news website quotes him as saying on May 27.

Over the course of 50 years, ending in 1989, more than 450 atomic tests were conducted in the region.



Kazakhstan: close encounters with camels on the Aral Sea bed

A EurasiaNet Diary by David Trilling

I never thought they could get so huge. At the zoo when I was four, camels seemed big, but I was only three-feet tall. Everything was big then.

At the bottom of the Aral Sea, in what is now a desert of salt and dust, they’re still enormous. In springtime, their wild winter manes spiked and crusty with another season of dirt, the Bactrian ungulates appear and sound something more like Chewbacca with four legs on steroids a million miles from a barbershop.

Named for a former province of the Persian Empire, Bactrian Camels were the workhorses -- so to speak -- of the Silk Road.

Our Kazakhstan correspondent Joanna Lillis and I spent three days searching for fishermen in the Aral Sea bed in early April. It was chilly then, too early to catch much on the icy puddles that remain of the former inland sea. That early in the season, fishermen retain their winter camouflage as camel herders.

For those three days we trundled around the desert in a speeding UAZ jeep, our guide Temirbolat somehow oriented -- as far as we knew -- despite the endless lunar scrub landscape. Temirbolat had it in his blood: a steppe nomad in a steel Soviet jeep. He would silently navigate the looping desert tracks with nothing to define the landscape other than a slowly arcing sun. Maybe he could smell the stars beyond the bright blue sky.

Approaching packs of camels, sometimes tended by a solitary, weathered horseman, I was surprised their wooly humps were so floppy, bouncing left and right as they hopped frightened from our vehicle. Those two humps, between which we children would sit powerless at the zoo, lay prostrate and gloomy after another harsh winter on the steppe at the bottom of the sea.

We stopped to ask directions of one herder in his lone homestead just as he was to go fetch water on the back of an impressive male specimen.

The 1000-pound beast batted his long eyelashes. I thought we were off to a good start.

But domesticated is a term that should be used lightly. Domesticated animals shouldn’t make such noises. The deep groaning ascends into a terrifying assertive blast, like a command grunted through fist-sized nostrils, with an arsenal of regurgitated cud to back up the demand.

At my cautious approach, his lips trapped in a permanent smile, the green frothy paste turned poised to spit at my face. He preened, twisting that muscular neck. Hollering, he stamped his feet and puckered for an explosion.

I was the first to retreat. The shrieking continued. Green slime spewed across the steppe.

Then, with a silent demonstration of control, the lone cowboy -- er, camelboy -- mounted and set off to find his invisible source of water.