Nazarbayev: Our descendants will not have to deal with any territory issues

Looking back one can see that centuries ago the land of the Kazakh people has never had accurately outlined borders. The khanate territory sometimes extended, and sometimes reduced. There was a time when the considerable part of the Kazakh lands was occupied by the jungars. Having joined the Russian Empire the Kazakh people partially kept the control over their land. The Kazakh territory was divided by the imperial administration from consideration of convenience of management. Until the middle of the 19th century the part of the southern and western Kazakh lands remained under the control of the Kokand and Khiva khanates. More than 140 years ago under the contract between Russia and China the border line was drawn which, after Kazakhstan's independence, was the legal basis for delimitation of the Kazakhstan-Chinese border. It should be noted, that during the Soviet period the borders of Kazakhstan were often reconsidered and changed as decided by Soviet Union administration. As soon as Kazakhstan became a sovereign state, number one objective of the Head of state to fix the borders with the neighboring countries. "Our goal was to develop the country preserving the territorial integrity. We have managed to do more than planned. For the first time in the history of Kazakhstan we have the official and internationally acknowledged borders. 14 thousand kilometers is the length of the frontier. Kazakhstan have reliable controls of its area in the Caspian Sea. The threat of emergence of any territorial disputes in the future is excluded. Our descendants will not have to deal with any land issues with the neighbors", - N. Nazarbayev told representing the Kazakhstan-2050 Strategy.

As we remember, the Strategy of development of Kazakhstan till 2030 provided the solution of the major objective to ensure security of Kazakhstan which means preserving sovereignty, territorial integrity and immunity of the frontiers. As a result of the big and complex work Kazakhstan was one of the first CIS countries which had outlined its borders.

This fact has huge political value - for the first time for the centuries-old history Kazakhstan obtained legally arranged territory. Certainly, considering a difficult and long story of legal registration of the Kazakhstan-Chinese border, the process of delimitation of the border with the People's Republic of China was the most difficult. The head of state held a number of intense negotiations with the management of the People's Republic of China. Already on April 26, 1994 the Agreement on the Kazakhstan-Chinese border which came into force on September 11, 1995, after exchange of instruments of ratification, was signed. In four years, in 1998 the supplementary agreement which finally settled the border questions between Kazakhstan and China was signed. Six working groups worked on the issue of demarcation of the Kazakhstan-Chinese border and on May 10, 2002 in Beijing Ministers of Foreign Affairs of Kazakhstan K. Tokayev and China Tang Jiaxuan signed the Protocol between the two countries' Government on demarcation of Kazakhstan-Chinese frontier. The total length of demarcated Kazakhstan-Chinese frontier is 1 782,75 km, where 1 215,86 km is overland border and 566,89 km water boundary. In turn, the Contract on neighborliness, friendship and cooperation between Kazakhstan and China signed by the heads of two states on December 23, 2002, as acknowledged by both countries' Presidents determined the future development of the Kazakhstan-Chinese relations. In 2001 the work on signing the frontier delimitation agreement of Republic of Kazakhstan with Turkmenistan,  Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan was carried through.  On June 3, 2005 the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of Kazakhstan and the Russian Federation signed the Annex to the Contract on the frontier between the two countries. The document contains the description of the frontier and an album of border map. The Annex is an integral part of the Border Agreement between Kazakhstan and Russia signed by N. Nazarbayev and V. Putin on January 18, 2005. The entire work on delimitation of the world's most extended overland border - more than 7,5 thousand kilometers - was complete.

It should be noted that Kazakhstan is the only Post-Soviet state which has delimited its borders. There are still boundary issues and territorial disputes between some Post-Soviet republics which have not been settled up to date. Successful legal registration of the borders of our country speaks about the high level of Kazakhstan's foreign policy worked out by the Head of state, and the competency of Kazakhstan's diplomatic bodies.