Kazakhstan Timelines for: 1990-2000 , 2001, 2002, 2003 , 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007.
2004 February 1 Pakistan reports Abdul Qadeer Khan confession regarding illicit nuclear sales
http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F40C11FF3C5F0C718CDDAB0894DC404482
By DAVID ROHDE AND DAVID E. SANGER, Key Pakistani Is Said to Admit Atom Transfers, February 2, 2004
The founder of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, has signed a detailed confession admitting that during the last 15 years he provided Iran, North Korea and Libya with the designs and technology to produce the fuel for nuclear weapons, according to a senior Pakistani official and three Pakistani journalists who attended a ttended a special government briefing here on Sunday night. In a two-and-a-half-hour presentation to 20 Pakistani journalists, a senior government official gave an exhaustive and startling account of how Dr. Khan, a national hero, spread secret technology to three countries that have been striving to produce their own nuclear arsenals. . . If the Pakistani government account is correct, Dr. Khan's admission amounts to one of the most complex and successful efforts to evade international controls to stop nuclear proliferation.
2004 February 11 – President Announces New Measures to Counter the Threat of WMD
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/02/20040211-4.html
Remarks by the President on Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation, Fort Lesley J. McNair – National Defense University, Washington, D.C., February 11, 2004. "Enrichment and reprocessing are not necessary for nations seeking to harness nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. . . The 40 nations of the Nuclear Suppliers Group should refuse to sell enrichment and reprocessing equipment and technologies to any state that does not already possess full-scale, functioning enrichment and reprocessing plants. This step will prevent new states from developing the means to produce fissile material for nuclear bombs. Proliferators must not be allowed to cynically manipulate the NPT to acquire the material and infrastructure necessary for manufacturing illegal weapons."
2004 February 20. Probe of Kazakhstan role in black market sales of nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57134-2004Feb20.html
2004 Bagila Bukharb, “Kazakhstan Probes Nuclear Black Market,” Associated Press story published in the Washington Post. “Kazakhstan has opened an investigation into the nuclear black market that helped Iran, Libya and North Korea, exploring suspected ties in the country that housed much of the Soviet Union’s atomic arsenal, officials told The Associated Press. The black market’s potential connection to Kazakhstan – which served as a nuclear testing ground until it disarmed after its 1991 independence – has raised concern about the proliferation of remnants of the Soviet weapons program. Kazakh officials strongly deny any highly enriched uranium – the form used in weapons – has leaked out of the country. Bush accused Sri Lankan businessman Bukhary Syed Abu Tahir of brokering black-market deals for nuclear technology using his Dubai-based company SMB Computers as a front. That firm also has an office in the Kazakh commercial capital, Almaty. The Kazakh intelligence agency, the National Security Committee, is investigating allegations that SMB Computers’ affiliate was dealing with highly enriched uranium, spokesman Kenzhebulat Beknazarov said Thursday. . . A Europe-based Western diplomat working on issues of nuclear proliferation questioned the reliability of Kazakh safeguards for its nuclear assets.
2004 April. NTI issue brief on Hoaxes and Scams Involving Red Mercury and Osmium-187
http://www.nti.org/e_research/e3_42a.html
Issue Brief: Nuclear Trafficking Hoaxes: A Short History of Scams Involving Red Mercury and Osmium-187, Kenley Butler, Akaki Dvali,Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS), Monterey Institute of International Studies, April 2004. Multiple instances of profit-motivated nuclear hoaxes have been reported in the media in the past two decades, in which sellers offer weapons-usable or weapons-grade nuclear material and instead deliver some other bogus radioactive, or in some cases, nonradioactive substance. Such scams increased when economic conditions in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe declined in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The region’s economic decline coupled with weakened security and enforcement mechanisms and a growing interest on the part of both state and non-state actors to illegally obtain nuclear materials all created favorable conditions for nuclear trafficking scams. . . Two non-fissile substances that frequently have been used by con artists as substitutes for nuclear materials are so-called red mercury and osmium-187. Hoaxes involving both substances have become legendary after being the subject of widely reported trafficking attempts throughout the 1990s.
2004 April 22-24. Eurasia Media Forum in Almaty.
http://www.homestead.com/prosites-kazakhembus/eamf2004.html
Nice article about these annual events: http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight/articles/eav042204a.shtml
EURASIA MEDIA FORUM: CENTRAL ASIA’S MASTERS OF SPIN
Jeremy Druker: 4/22/04
2004 July 20. Death of jouranlist Askhat Sharipzhan from hit-and-run accident.
http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2006/10/f55bc52f-9219-48f6-bce1-ab8f47389de6.html
Askhat Sharipzhan: An independent journalist, died July 20, 2004. Sharipzhan's death was officially attributed to a traffic accident. However, his position as a political analyst for the online publication "Navi" and his activities in the days leading up to his death have led some NGOs and Kazakh politicians to conclude that Sharipzhan was killed. Sharipzhan had conducted interviews with two prominent opposition leaders on the day he died, and the recordings of those interviews and the keys to his office were never found. The opposition figures Sharipzhan interviewed — Zamanbek Nurqadilov and Altynbek Sarsenbaev — later died in separate incidents.
2004 December 5. LA Times story by Ken Silverstein
http://www.gasandoil.com/GOC/news/ntc42203.htm
Ken Silverstein, "The prospect of oil adds a sheen to the Kazakh regime," LA Times, December 5, 2004. . . The United States' political engagement grew along with its corporate investment. In 1994, the Clinton administration established the US-Kazakhstan Joint Commission, headed by Nazarbayev and Vice President Al Gore Robert Baer, a former CIA officer who covered the Caspian region during the Clinton years, said oil executives met regularly with National Security Council staffers to discuss Central Asia. "In my experience, there was an unprecedented level of input from oil companies," Baer said. "We considered it to be in our national interest for oil companies to invest there, and we didn't want anything to get in the way." But Nazarbayev's commitment to democracy was waning. "Nazarbayev came to realize that there would be no serious consequences for his antidemocratic actions," said Martha Brill Olcott, a Caspian expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who has consulted for ChevronTexaco. In 1995, a year before a scheduled presidential election and only four years after Kazakhstan gained independence, Nazarbayev staged a referendum that extended his term for four years. The State Department described the election as "marred by irregularities," and in a report from the period said corruption was "pervasive throughout the government."
None of this seriously affected US-Kazakh relations. A few months after postponing the presidential vote, Nazarbayev came to Washington, where he and Gore hashed out details of a pipeline that would carry oil from Chevron's Tengiz field to international markets.
"My feeling was that it was better to be engaged with them than not engaged," said Richard Morningstar, who served as President Clinton's special advisor on Caspian energy issues. "It wasn't an ideal situation, but it was better than it would have been without American involvement." . .
Three months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Nazarbayev visited the United States once more. In Houston, he met with former Secretary of State Baker and the first President Bush. Then he flew to Washington, where he attended a lunch at which Cheney played host and had a White House meeting with the current President Bush. Nazarbayev's cooperation in the Bush administration's war against terrorism was one factor behind the warm reception. During the fighting to the south in Afghanistan, he allowed US warplanes to use Almaty's airport. . .
Rep. Joe Barton (news, bio, voting record) (R-Texas), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, inserted a statement in the Congressional Record on Sept. 24 in support of Kazakhstan. "Mr Speaker, if the United States is to become truly energy independent, it must seek non-OPEC alternatives for our supply of oil," Barton's statement said. "Kazakhstan can — and is willing to — help greatly in this endeavour." The statement was nearly identical to a draft prepared by Patton Boggs, a top Washington lobbying firm that is paid $ 60,000 a month by Kazakhstan, its foreign agent filing shows.
Kazakhstan assembled top US legal, lobbying and public relations help in its campaign to win favour in Washington, including a number of high-ranking former officials, some of whom formed the "P-Group," a political SWAT team. Michael K. Deaver, President Reagan's deputy chief of staff, recruited "third parties" to write newspaper opinion pieces for the public relations campaign. Jay Kriegel, a former senior vice president at CBS, was asked to keep key consultant James H. Giffen "regularly apprised" of P-Group activities. James Langdon Jr., an energy lawyer and a leading fundraiser for President Bush. His firm did lobbying and legal work for Kazakhstan. Dick Thornburgh, an attorney general in the Reagan and first Bush administrations, was hired by the Kazakh government to provide legal advice. Reid Weingarten, a former Justice Department lawyer, wrote a letter to his old agency warning of risks to US-Kazakh ties if prosecution of Giffen went ahead.
2004 Decumber 19. Death of Erzhan Tatishev, head of Kazakhstan't largest bank, in "hunting accident."
http://rfe.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2007/04/AB0CA6E2-0A9A-42D1-829F-1C37A82BD178.html
Erzhan Tatishev — head of Kazakhstan's largest bank, TuranAlemBank — is killed in what was officially described as a hunting accident. Kazakh political observers allege that it was a premeditated assassination.
See Kazakhstan Timelines for: 1990-2000 , 2001, 2002, 2003 , 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007.