Nuclear powers should provide security guarantees: President Nazarbayev

"If the Great Nuclear Powers, which have the largest number of warheads, declared that they have a program for gradually reducing these weapons and proposed other countries to follow the path taken by them, it would work better," the Head of State said answering the journalists' questions.

According to him, the nuclear powers should provide security guarantees to those countries that abandon nuclear weapons.

"After abandoning nuclear weapons, Kazakhstan received security guarantees from five states. Despite the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, Pakistan, India, and now North Korea, have become nuclear countries. Besides, there are 15 threshold states that can become nuclear countries. We did our best on this issue and created the International Low-Enriched Uranium Bank," Nursultan Nazarbayev emphasized.

The states willing to start using a peaceful atom need not enrich uranium on their own as nuclear elements can end up in the wrong hands. Therefore, states can take low-enriched uranium from that bank and use it for the operation of nuclear power plants, he said.

"It is a matter of global confidence, without which it is hard to tackle all global issues. As to terrorism, once again I set forward the proposal that there should be a world coalition of all states to fight terrorism. One state cannot cope with it as terrorism spreads everywhere and sees no bounds," the President of Kazakhstan summarized.