Kazakhstan will promote the interests of the five former Soviet republics of Central Asia during its 2017-18 stint in the UN Security Council, President Nursultan Nazarbaev says.
On January 1, Kazakhstan became the first of the five countries -- which also include Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan -- to hold a seat on the 15-nation council. Its permanent members are the United States, Russia, China, Britain, and France.
In an address to the council that was presented by Kazakh Foreign Ministry officials in New York on January 10, Nazarbaev said that his country will also initiate discussions on the restoration of peace in Afghanistan, which borders the region on the south.
He said that Kazakhstan "is set for a strong contribution to the peaceful resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli crisis and other conflicts in the Middle East, Afghanistan, and on the former Soviet space, deescalation of tension on the Korean Peninsula, and resolution of crises in Africa and Asia."
Nazarbaev hailed the 2015 agreement to curb Iran's nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief and vowed to support policies discouraging the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
Nazarbaev also said his country will offer to develop a "code of international antiterrorist operations that could form a basis for the creation of a global antiterrorist network."
