Kazakhstan, Astana, Oct. 12 / Trend , A.Maratov /
Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev urged the international community to establish a global anti-nuclear movement.
"It is important to create an authoritative, powerful global anti-nuclear movement," Nazarbayev stated today at the opening of the International Forum for a Nuclear Weapons-Free World in Astana.
The forum is dedicated to the 20th Anniversary of the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site's closure.
Following the collapse of the USSR, Kazakhstan inherited the world's fourth largest nuclear capabilities. The USSR's biggest areas in testing, space and nuclear test sites - Emba, Sary-Shagan, Baikonur and Semipalatinsk were located throughout the country.
The effects of the Semipalatinsk test site affected more than 1.5 million people in Kazakhstan, Nazarbayev said.
"During the four decades of testing, more than 450 bombings, including 120 in the atmosphere, were carried out here. The total capacity of the explosions would have been able to destroy 2,500 Hiroshimas,' he said. "Radiation struck more than 300,000 square kilometers, which is approximately equal to the size of a country like Germany."
After gaining independence, Kazakhstan refused Russian nuclear warheads. In 1996, the country acceded to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Kazakhstan celebrates the 20th anniversary of the closing of the Semipalatinsk test site in 2011.
"The closing of the Semipalatinsk test site was the first and still the only complete and accomplished ban on nuclear weapons tests in the world," Nazarbayev said.
Kazakhstan, he said, sees the nuclear-free world as a grand goal to which the planet should strive.
"With the adoption of this international instrument, we associate the creation of an integrated system of global nuclear safety under strict UN supervision in the 21st century, which will have exclusive authority for this," Nazarbayev said.