10 Sept UN General Assembly holds meeting on Int’l Day Against Nuclear Tests
The official opening ceremony will be attended by H.E. Mr. Sam Kutesa, President of the United Nations General Assembly, H.E. Mr. Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations and H.E. Kairat Abdrakhmanov, Permanent Representative of the Republic of Kazakhstan to the United Nations in New York. The official Opening Ceremony will be followed by a High-Level Interactive Panel on the theme,"TOWARDS ZERO: RESOLVING THE CONTRADICTIONS" which will include speakers from the UN and countries such as the United States, Croatia, and Kiribati, as well as officials from the IAEA and CTBTO. The distinguished experts will comment from their perspective on the pursuit of a nuclear-weapon-free world and provide some ideas on whether and how common ground may be achieved among the different approaches and new initiatives. In December 2009, the UN General Assembly unanimously passed a resolution, put forward by Kazakhstan, to proclaim August 29, the day of the first test at the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site in 1949 and the day of the closure of the test site by the decree of President Nursultan Nazarbayev in 1991, as the International Day Against Nuclear Tests. It has been marked globally since 2010 every year. At the events in New York, The ATOM Project and its Honorary Ambassador Karipbek Kuyukov will present the tragic history of nuclear weapons testing in Kazakhstan and the story of the country's nuclear disarmament and campaigning for a nuclear-weapons-free world.
