Team:Edinburgh/mapxmlkazakhstan



Kazakhstan <![CDATA[The Republic of Kazakhstan has not acceded to the Mine Ban Treaty. In March 2007, the Deputy Minister of Defense emphasized Kazakhstan’s support for the Mine Ban Treaty’s humanitarian objectives, but cited the perceived need for antipersonnel mines to protect its long border “in certain circumstances” and the need for alternatives as the reasons Kazakhstan has not yet joined the treaty. In March 2006, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs official told Landmine Monitor that “Kazakhstan is preparing to destroy its stockpile of antipersonnel mines. Most of these antipersonnel landmines are expired.” In March 2007, the Deputy Minister of Defense said that some 3,000 antipersonnel mines had been destroyed three years earlier by open detonation, and that there was a plan for further destruction. The size of Kazakhstan’s antipersonnel mine stockpile is not known, but a 1998 media report estimated that the government had between 800,000 and one million antipersonnel mines. A news report on 18 July 2008 said police found “an ammunition cache containing anti-tank and anti-personnel mines, 1 kg of ammonite and seven fuses in the yard of a private house in Aktobe Region.” Government officials have at times acknowledged the use of landmines in border areas and at other times denied the existence of minefields in Kazakhstan.

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