Calls for halting nuclear programs

Friday, June 2, 2006 | 7:18 a.m.

Representatives of two countries with long histories of atomic weapons testing programs called for the end of developing new nuclear weapons after a panel discussion Thursday in Las Vegas.

Ambassador Kanat Saudabayev from Central Asia's Kazakhstan told a group at Las Vegas' Atomic Testing Museum that his country, a former republic of the Soviet Union, endured 456 nuclear explosions in the region of Semipalatinsk, which is similar to Nevada's Nuclear Test Site.

Saudabayev joined Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., and veterans of the American nuclear program in the discussion on the shared legacy of the testing programs.

One difference, Saudabayev noted, was that Semipalatinsk is in a densely populated part of his country. The Nevada Test Site, about 60 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is in mostly unpopulated federally controlled desert.

Both the United States and the Soviet Union stopped nuclear testing in the early 1990s, and Kazakhstan became independent in 1991. While the Nevada Test Site continues to be an active center for national defense work, Kazakhstan has stopped such work at the Semipalatinsk test site. At the time of its independence, the country had the world's fourth-largest nuclear arsenal, but it has since dismantled all of its atomic weapons.

The ambassador, who has represented Kazakhstan since 2000 in Washington, said his country and the United States would continue cooperating to stop nuclear proliferation by countries and terrorist groups.

He did not mention Iran, Kazakhstan's neighbor, however. The Bush administration and allies are concerned that the Islamic republic is on its way to developing its own nuclear weapon, although Iranian officials say they are only pursuing a peaceful nuclear power program. Kazakhstan is also predominantly Muslim.

Following the discussion, Saudabayev, through a translator, carefully phrased his government's position on Iran's nuclear ambitions: "We are concerned in principle with proliferation of nuclear weapons in any country The issue of Iran needs to be an issue of discussion and negotiation in the international community."

He similarly cautioned against a nuclear weapons development program in the United States. That issue resurfaced recently with the announcement of a planned Defense Department test - now postponed - that would detonate 700 tons of conventional explosives at the Nevada Test Site. Federal officials said the Test Site blast could aid in the development of either a conventional or nuclear weapon.

Berkley said following the panel that the planned detonation, originally scheduled for today but now indefinitely postponed, may not return: "I'm hearing it's dead."

She noted that there were environmental concerns from the state of Nevada and activists around the West. "I'm very pleased the feds have backed off on this," she said. "They could not meet the environmental standards of the state of Nevada.

"They were not in compliance and could never be in compliance."

Also participating in the panel discussion were seven others, including Mary Dickson, a Salt Lake City resident and activist with Downwinders United, a group that participated in a lawsuit to stop the planned blast at the Test Site. That group believes nuclear testing has exposed millions to sickening radioactive fallout.

"We know what fallout did," she said. "It's impossible to know how many Americans were affected by nuclear testing. Too many people have died and continue to die."

Not everyone on the panel agreed.

Nick Aquilina, a member of the Nevada Test Site Historical Foundation and a former Test Site manager, declined to join the others on the panel in signing a statement condemning nuclear testing and calling for an end to nuclear proliferation.

He told the audience of about 100 people at the session that the work at the Test Site helped build a nuclear deterrence that prevented a third world war.

Other than the bombs dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II, he said, "one has not been used in anger since."