By Vestnik Kavkaza
The other meeting of six international mediators on nuclear problem and Tehran’s representatives should take place in Alma-Ata on April 5-6. Ahead of it expert consultations will take place in Istanbul on March 17-18.
“Kazakhstan is not a direct participant in the negotiations, but we are happy that on the territory of Kazakhstan, in Alma-Ata, in the state that was the first to reject the fourth-largest nuclear arsenal, these negotiations were held,” Galym Orazbakov, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Kazakhstan to the Russian Federation, says. “I think that it is, in particular, an evaluation of the activity of Kazakhstan and the Kazakh leaders in the non-proliferation of nuclear threats and nuclear weapons. The talks have contributed to the strengthening of mutual understanding between Iran and the group of international negotiators. The Kazakh side confirmed its readiness to host the next meeting in Alma-Ata.”
“A broad array of U.S. experts, technicians, politicians and military are involved in this dialogue,” Anton Khlopkov, director of the Center for Energy and Security, the chief editor of "Nuclear Club", states. “The research community is seeking new approaches, possible scenarios and formats of dialogue of the "six "or of just a bilateral dialogue; this is a big topic in the United States. Of course, before this process is completed within the United States it is probably hard to expect any serious progress in the dialogue as a whole.”
“When in the 60s - 70s Iran or any other power was concerned about nuclear technology, no peaceful technology could be investigated then because at the end of the 60s nuclear energy was something experimental, economically unfounded and, in fact, a kind of option, which was to be entered. Therefore, all of the studies that were conducted in the 60s do not have specific technological, energy implementation in the 70's,” Maxim Shingarkin, deputy of the State Duma, remembers the history. “There is nothing to hide: from the very beginning of the nuclear program of Iran, it was military, and the military component was the main one, and geopolitical leverage here was very simple. By the beginning of the 70s it was clear that in a bipolar world the weight of states not participating on the side of one or the other country could be increased only through access to nuclear technology. We see this in the case of India and Pakistan, we know that only ten years ago a very delicate political moment between the two countries was passed, which, thank God, could be resolved by the world community, but while resolving the hypothetical situation of the possible use of nuclear weapons by the parties, we in any case did not discuss the question of how competent India and Pakistan were to possess these weapons.”
Speaking about why we have a completely different agenda concerning the possession of nuclear weapons by Iran, Shingarkin believes that “it is not only about the fact of possession or non-possession of nuclear weapons, as a kind of fetish, but about the purposes for which different regimes can get access to nuclear weapons technology. For the terrorist way to use nuclear weapons, a uranium program should be developed, because only a nuclear weapon on the basis of uranium-235 can be used covertly, without a declaration of war, and with its transportation close to the territory of the enemy it may not be a weapon of deterrence but the antithesis to political pressure. There are insurmountable political conflicts "Iran - Israel", "Iran - the United States.” So, today, of course, experts are concerned about one very simple thing: creating a verification system that would allow this enrichment program to be separated - please enrich what you want, but with increasing concentrations of 235, of course, the stability of the uranium program, or rather, Iran's nuclear program, the essence of which is to enrich uranium, ends and becomes the subject of an urgently-needed political settlement.”
