The Washington Post
October 4

Five Central Asian nations have agreed to a treaty declaring their region a nuclear weapons-free zone in a move toward stemming arms proliferation and distancing themselves from Russia.

After five years of stalled negotiations, envoys from the countries settled on a final text of the treaty at a conference last week in Uzbekistan and might hold a signing ceremony as early as this month. The ceremony is expected to be held at Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan, the onetime nuclear weapons test center for the Soviet Union.

Joining Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan in reaching the agreement were Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan, all former Soviet republics that became independent a decade ago and are still struggling with the environmental legacy of the arms race. The treaty would prohibit any of them from developing, producing or testing nuclear weapons, or helping any other country to do so. It would also ban them from allowing other nations to station nuclear weapons there. Kazakhstan held Soviet nuclear weapons during the Cold War, but returned them to Russia after the Soviet collapse. Today, Central Asian nations no longer have such weapons, but are surrounded by others that do, or are believed to be seeking them. In addition to established nuclear powers Russia and China, the Central Asian states are near nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan, and both Iran and Iraq are believed to have sought fissionable material to build nuclear devices.

Various reports have suggested that terrorists, including Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda while operating in Afghanistan, have tried to obtain fissionable material from Central Asia, and treaty advocates contend the new pact could help prevent the region from becoming a transit corridor for nuclear proliferation.

"Central Asia is an important region because of its proximity to Afghanistan," said Arman Baislanov, head of the national security department at the Kazakh Foreign Ministry. "The world community believes that a stronger control regime in Central Asia would be helpful in ensuring that illegal organizations in Afghanistan and other countries will not be able to obtain material for nuclear weapons."

"It's very important because now the Central Asian states finally have come to recognize their own role in the area of providing security and stability in the region," Alla Karimova, the chief diplomat negotiating the treaty for Uzbekistan, said by telephone from the capital of Tashkent.

The treaty also could thwart any Russian attempt to reintroduce tactical nuclear weapons to the region, an option it has quietly tried to preserve during negotiations. The United States, which now has bases in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, would also be barred from introducing nuclear weapons there. For that reason, analysts said, China considers the new nuclear weapons-free zone a security boon.

"The Russians don't like this at all," said William C. Potter, director of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California, who has followed the issue closely. "They're not happy with anything that limits their freedom to maneuver."

The Russian Foreign Ministry did not respond to repeated requests for comment. But a Moscow analyst said the issue was more important to the Central Asian countries than to the Kremlin. "The leaders of Central Asia want to emphasize that they are an exception [in the region] -- they're not Iran, they cannot be compared to Pakistan, they don't dream of this prospect. In that context, they belong to world society," said Alexei Malashenko, a scholar at the Carnegie Moscow Center.

In the negotiations, Russia inserted language protecting Moscow's ability to redeploy nuclear weapons in Central Asia. Kazakhstan, acting on Russian concerns, insisted on a clause saying that the new treaty did not affect obligations of past treaties, according to participants. Russia maintains that a collective security pact signed in Tashkent in 1992 gives it the right to deploy nuclear arms in Central Asia, a disputed interpretation.

But the other negotiators who met at Samarkand, Uzbekistan, last week added a follow-up sentence saying that the signatories would take all necessary measures to implement the main principles of the treaty, language they believe obligates them to rebuff any Russian deployment.

Central Asia would be the world's fifth such nuclear weapons-free zone, but the first negotiated under the auspices of the United Nations. After announcing their intention to create such a zone in 1997, the Central Asian states bogged down. Their newfound closeness to the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks made it easier to resolve differences and resist Russian pressure, participants said.

The countries are still debating when to sign the treaty. Uzbekistan and others want a ceremony during an Oct. 16-23 visit by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan. Baislanov said Kazakhstan wants to wait, perhaps until year's end, to see whether the five established nuclear powers sign a protocol agreeing to respect the terms of the treaty.

All agree to have the ceremony at Semipalatinsk, where, over 40 years ending in 1989, the Soviets tested more than 460 nuclear bombs. Today, the local population continues to suffer from the remaining radioactive waste. "We have a lot of negative experience," said Baislanov.

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