Professor of University of Antwerp: Kazakhstan’s anti-nuclear efforts should be an example for entire world

This year, the President of Kazakhstan presented his Manifesto “The World. The 21^st Century” in which he outlined again a number of initiatives regarding nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. How would you evaluate Kazakhstan’s anti-nuclear efforts?

Kazakhstan’s leading role in nuclear weapons non-proliferation process  was recognized long ago. You closed the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Testing Site right after the Cold war and voluntarily refused the world's fourth largest nuclear arsenal.  Some countries still have to do that. If all countries do that, there will be a nuclear-weapon-free world.

Under the IAEA aegis, Kazakhstan has established the Low-Enriched Uranium Bank in its territory meant for the countries planning to develop nuclear energy.

We should also mention that Kazakhstan is a part of a nuclear-weapon-free zone in Central Asia. It’s up now to other regions of the world to follow Kazakhstan's example.

We still don’t have a nuclear-weapon-free zone in Europe, since Great Britain and France still possess nuclear arsenals, and American nuclear weapons are stored in Europe, in Belgium.

Last year, during the UN GA’s jubilee gathering, President Nursultan Nazarbayev initiated to adopt a Universal Declaration on Building a Nuclear-Weapon-Free World. The document calls for full liquidation of nuclear weapons as an only and absolute guarantee against its use or threat of use.

 I can only applaud this kind of policy and I back these and other similar anti-nuke initiatives of Kazakhstan.

The President of Kazakhstan says that it is important to adapt the international disarmament process to new historical conditions. In this regard, we need to update the strategy of the UN Disarmament Conference’s activity. What can you say about this issue?

I think we should say, first of all, that nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation regime is in a crisis now. There are a lot of nuclear weapon states, while the Review Conference of the Treaty Signatory Countries held last year failed and the states could not reach a consensus. The  UN Conference on Nuclear Disarmament has also been in impasse for 15 years already. And in the meantime all nuclear weapon states are modernizing their nuclear arsenals for billions of dollars.

So, in addition, the risk of nuclear incidents is on rise. Especially between Russia and West Europe, also between India and Pakistan, and then we still have North Korea. In this frame Kazakhstan’s anti-nuclear policy is a positive example for the rest of the world.

Nevertheless, it will be difficult for Kazakhstan to solve this problem alone. For this, we need involvement of more countries. This is an idealistic proposition, however, I am confident in its reality.

After the recent terrorist attacks in Paris, Brussels and Nice, some politicians and experts spoke about possible use of mass destruction weapons by terrorists, including nuclear ones. How do you assess the reality of nuclear terrorism in Europe?

The worst case scenario, of course, is a combination of ideology and technology. That means terrorists managed to get mass destruction weapons: biological, chemical, radiological and nuclear. This is not just a fantasy. We are moving to the use  of this kind of weapons by terrorist organizations.

It’s unlikely, of course, that  terrorist groups possess nuclear weapons, but it is much easier to explode the so called “dirty bombs”, a conventional weapon with radioactive materials. And these radioactive materials can be found even in hospitals. It’s not very difficult to find them and to use them. And the result will be health consequences for a long period of time  in that city or village.

 Belgium faces a problem of nuclear terrorism now. For example, a Belgian national died in Syria in 2014. Prior to leaving to the war, in 2012, he worked at a nuclear reactor in the northern part of the country. Two years later in 2014 there was a sabotage incident at that nuclear reactor and the result was complete operational failure of the reactor for months and millions of euros losses.  Up to now nobody knows who did it.

Here is one more example. In 2015, Belgian police found a videorecord during one of its investigation raids after the November 13 terror attack in Paris. The video was shot on a hidden camera which was directed on a door of an apartment of the director of a Nuclear Research Program in Belgium, in Flanders. It was the terrorists who installed the camera. These guys were interested in high-jacking or using this nuclear scientist for getting probably radioactive materials.

Lastly, this year one of the security agents at the Tihange Nuclear Power Station was killed and his badge was stolen. So these are the incidents in a row.  …. It is easy to predict that in future we will get to be confronted with the phenomenon of nuclear terrorism.

Thank you for the interview.