[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 64 (Thursday, April 30, 2015)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E624]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 TRIBUTE TO THE REPUBLIC OF KAZAKHSTAN

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. ADAM B. SCHIFF

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, April 30, 2015

  Mr. SCHIFF. 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.

                          ____________________