Kazakh Senate Speaker Kasym-Zhomart Tokayev passed on to Obama an invitation from the Kazakh president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, at a meeting of a forum of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations in Istanbul.
The Kazakh senator in his invitation informed Obama of his country's readiness to adhere to the nuclear non-proliferation policies agreed at recent talks in Astana with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and to set up a nuclear fuel bank as part of a civilian program supervised by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Obama earlier described U.S. relations with Kazakhstan as «strategic» and promised to visit the «friendly» ex-Soviet republic.
Author: Ksenia Kochneva
