The implications of Ahmadinejad’s visit to Kazakhstan

This week, this fact made itself evident once more during Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's two-day official visit to Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, with the aim of strengthening bilateral relations in various areas. The visit served this purpose not only through the signing of five new cooperation deals -- ranging from sports to setting up a joint tanker company -- but also led to two new developments that could influence two major issues of contention.

The first issue concerns the nearly two-decade-old dispute over the legal status of the Caspian Sea, which, of course, is viewed as a new energy basin after the Middle East. In this context, during his talks with President Ahmadinejad, President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan offered a new proposal to help solve the legal dispute. “We think it would be more logical to establish sovereign zones, extending 22 to 25 miles from the Caspian shore, which would be considered state territory. I think this would be a good compromise,'' he said.

In fact, Nazarbayev's proposal represents a “third solution” to the dispute because so far littoral states were divided between two possible solutions: to divide the Caspian into national sectors extending from an individual country's coastline to a determined midway point or to divide the Caspian equally among the five littoral states, which Iran is the most ardent and stubborn supporter of so far.

At this point, we know neither Iran nor other countries' responses to Nazarbayev's proposal, but it is safe to assume that this proposal will be considered in one way or another. Of course, time will show how far this proposal will go in solving the dispute.

The other development has to do with the current dispute over Iran's nuclear program. In this context, President Nazarbayev proposed a nuclear fuel repository or bank be created -- and suggested his country could host the facility “as a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty [NPT] and as a country that has voluntarily renounced nuclear weapons.”    

In responding to Nazarbayev's proposal, President Ahmadinejad staunchly defended his country's right to enrich uranium for its nuclear program, but at the same time welcomed Nazarbayev's proposal, “especially considering Kazakhstan's past.'' “We think that President Nursultan Nazarbayev's idea to host a nuclear fuel bank is a very good proposal,” he said. However, he did not say that Iran would give up its right to produce nuclear fuel.

President Ahmadinejad's positive response to the idea of a global nuclear fuel bank is, of course, encouraging. It may help reduce concerns about Iran's nuclear intentions. It came one day after US President Barack Obama announced an ambitious plan to stem nuclear proliferation worldwide in Prague. In fact, setting up a global nuclear bank was a US proposal made some time ago, which would be funded and supervised by the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), to supply countries with enriched uranium for their nuclear power stations and, thereby, eliminate the need for individual countries -- like Iran -- to enrich their own uranium. Then, Iran did not respond to the proposal at all. Now, President Ahmadinejad at least finds it a good proposal, which makes it one of the possible solutions, among others, to Iran's dispute with the international community.

Let's hope the idea, or rather, the proposal, made by President Nazarbayev is taken much more seriously by others and becomes a viable solution to the dispute.