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U.S. House Member Commends Kazakstan and The ATOM Project for Anti-Nuclear Weapons Efforts

May 1, 2015

U.S. House Representative Adam B. Schiff of California’s 28th Congressional District commended Kazakhstan and The ATOM Project in the congressional record from participating in last week’s Bike Away the Atomic Bomb ride from Washington, DC to New York City in support of nuclear nonproliferation. Read his full remarks below.

ADAM SCHIFFHON. ADAM B. SCHIFF OF CALIFORNIA
Thursday, April 30, 2015
Mr. Speaker, last week, with great fanfare and enthusiasm, the Bike Away the Atomic Bomb ride set off from in front of the Capitol. That project, coordinated by Kazakhstan’s ATOM Project along with Bike for Peace and Mayors for Peace, sent riders from DC to New York to call for a Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty at the UN Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference that began April 27. They were seen off by the ATOM project’s Honorary Ambassador, the artist and painter Karipbek Kuyukov, who was born–without arms–roughly 60 miles from the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site in eastern Kazakhstan . It was the beginning of a 200-mile ride, but also a leg in a long, admirable journey Kazakhstan has taken since its independence.
In an increasingly dangerous world, the Republic of Kazakhstan has taken the lead in eliminating nuclear weapons while supporting the safe, secure, and peaceful use of nuclear energy. When the Soviet Union collapsed in December 1991, a newly-independent Kazakhstan inherited 1,410 nuclear warheads as well as the Semipalatinsk nuclear weapon test site. By 1995–just four short years later–the young country had destroyed or removed all their nuclear weapons and joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as a non-nuclear weapons state; by the year 2000, it had destroyed its nuclear testing infrastructure at Semipalatinsk.
Kazakhstan is one of only a handful of countries that has taken these dramatic steps to make the world safer. Of those few, it is in a unique position to understand the devastating effects of nuclear weapons. For forty years, Kazakhstan was a test site for nuclear weapons. The fall-out from these hundreds of tests, including over 100 above ground, has left the Kazakh people with a terrible legacy of untimely deaths and birth defects that continue to this day. As Americans, we are lucky to only be able to grasp the threat of nuclear weapons abstractly and intellectually; for the Kazakhs that threat has been all too real.
In response to this terrible historical burden, Kazakhstan has taken the lead promoting nuclear non-proliferation. It has promoted a Central Asian Nuclear Weapons Free Zone and is now leading a global movement against nuclear weapons testing while offering to host the world’s first “nuclear fuel bank” in cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency. It has worked to keep Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, and hosted the P5+1 talks in Almaty. And while taking advantage of its natural and technological resources to develop civilian nuclear power as an additional energy source, for both itself and other countries, Kazakhstan sought to make civilian nuclear power production more safe and secure by agreeing to adopt the Nuclear Security Guidelines at 2014 Nuclear Security Summit.
Members, myself included, regularly take to the floor to call attention to the problems in another country. Whether we censure other nations for their belligerence, condemn them for their treatment of their own populations, or express concern over their challenges in the face of internal crises, we too often speak out on the depressing news that somewhere in the world, something has gone terribly wrong. It gives me enormous pleasure, as a co-chair of the House’s Nuclear Security Working Group, to call our attention today to a nation where something that has gone very, very right, and to commend the Republic of Kazakhstan for the role it continues to play in creating a safer, more secure future for itself and for the globe.