PRESIDENT OF KAZAKHSTAN NURSULTAN NAZARBAYEV CALLS FOR OSCE SUMMIT

Address by the President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev to the OSCE Permanent Council

Vienna, January 14: In an unprecedented video address to the OSCE Permanent Council delivered in Vienna on January 14, President Nursultan Nazarbayev outlined his vision for Kazakhstan’s Chairmanship agenda and called for a summit of this unique organization facing a decisive moment in its history.

Noting that Kazakhstan has assumed the Chairmanship of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) with “a sense of great responsibility”, President Nazarbayev said his country’s 18 years of independence have prepared it well for the chairmanship challenge.

“There is no doubt that the current world situation makes even more arduous the test which Kazakhstan, as a country chairing the OSCE, will have to pass. However, the most pressing problems that the OSCE is now facing have always been at the heart of our foreign policy.”

The President said Kazakhstan’s nuclear disarmament experience, its initiative to convene the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA), an analogue of OSCE in Asia, its promotion of inter-religious dialogue and its responsible policies on energy and food security have made the country a responsible partner of the international community, which up to the challenge of leading the world’s largest regional organization at the time of great trials in modern history.

“The erosion of the regime of non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, humanitarian and ecological disasters, famine, poverty, epidemics, depletion of energy resources, conflicts based on interethnic and interreligious differences—such is a far from complete list of“The erosion of the regime of non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, humanitarian and ecological disasters, famine, poverty, epidemics, depletion of energy resources, conflicts based on interethnic and interreligious differences—such is a far from complete list of the challenges faced by modern civilization that call for maximum efforts by multilateral institutions of high standing like the OSCE,” the President said.

Full text of the Address is here