(2014-0836-F) President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan

The materials in FOIA 2014-0836-F are a selective body of documents responsive to the topic of the FOIA. Researchers should consult the archivist about related materials. The records processed in response to this FOIA request concern correspondence between President Clinton and Kazakhtani President Nursultan Nazarbayev. President Nazarbayev began his political career in 1962, when he joined the Communist Party. In 1979, he became the Secretary of the Committee of the Communist Party of the Republic of Kazakhstan. By 1990 he was Chairman of the Supreme Council of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic. In April 1990, the Supreme Soviet named Nazarbayev the first President of Kazakhstan, a position which he retained when Kazakhstan achieved independence from the former USSR in 1991. Since that time, he has won reelection in 1999, 2005, and 2011. His administration has been focused on economic matters, with an emphasis on modernizing Kazakhstan’s economy and pursuing membership in international trade agreements. He has also consistently raised the shrinking of the Aral Sea, due to the diversion of its two major rivers in 1960. In his 1998 autobiography, Nursultan Nazarbayev: My Life, My Times and My Future..., he has called it “one of the most serious ecological disasters faced by our planet today.” Similarly, the Nazarbayev administration, from the beginning, has been committed to de-nuclearization. Kazakhstan returned its nuclear warheads to Russia in 1995 and destroyed the nuclear testing facility at Semipalatinsk in 2000. The correspondence between Presidents Clinton and Nazarbayev, which continued throughout the entirety of the Clinton administration, concerned these economic, environmental, and nuclear matters. The materials processed in response to this FOIA case consist of administrative forms and memos related to correspondence between the two heads of state from the National Security Council (NSC) Records Management numbered documents. In addition to the topics listed above, there is routine correspondence regarding congratulatory messages for Kazakhstan’s Republic Day on December 16th . The released materials also contain a letter of condolence from President Nazarbayev for the Charkhi Dadri mid-air plane collision in November 1996. The majority of the remaining letters and messages between Presidents Clinton and Nazarbayev are closed for national security reasons.