Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev announces resignation

Nursultan Nazarbayev announces shock resignation in televised address, hands over power to speaker of upper house.

Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev has abruptly announced his resignation, 29 years after taking office.

In a televised address on Tuesday, the 78-year-old said he has taken the "difficult" decision to terminate his authority as president, but did not give a specific reason for the shock decision.

"I have decided to end my duties as president," Nazarbayev said, before signing a decree terminating his powers from March 30.

"This year I will have held the highest post for 30 years," he said. "As the founder of the independent Kazakh state I see my task now in facilitating the rise of a new generation of leaders who will continue the reforms that are under way in the country."

Nazarbayev, who was elected for a fifth-five year term in 2015, said that upper house speaker Kassym-Jomart Tokayev will serve as the interim head of state until a new election is held.

The announcement came less than a month after Nazarbayev sacked his government, citing a lack of economic development despite the country's vast energy resources.

“Asked about that, the commission confirmed that Uranium One has, in fact, shipped yellowcake to Canada even though it does not have an export license. Instead, the transport company doing the shipping, RSB Logistic Services, has the license. A commission spokesman said that “to the best of our knowledge” most of the uranium sent to Canada for processing was returned for use in the United States. A Uranium One spokeswoman, Donna Wichers, said 25 percent had gone to Western Europe and Japan. At the moment, with the uranium market in a downturn, nothing is being shipped from the Wyoming mines.
“The “no export” assurance given at the time of the Rosatom deal is not the only one that turned out to be less than it seemed. Despite pledges to the contrary, Uranium One was delisted from the Toronto Stock Exchange and taken private. As of 2013, Rosatom’s subsidiary, ARMZ, owned 100 percent of it.”

And here was something else on Bill Clinton and honest elections from the article. It has to do with the Kazakh mine angle to the Uranium One deal (supposedly the mines that Russia really wanted, as opposed to the US mines that just seemed to come along with the deal).

“The two men had flown aboard Mr. Giustra’s private jet to Almaty, Kazakhstan, where they dined with the authoritarian president, Nursultan A. Nazarbayev. Mr. Clinton handed the Kazakh president a propaganda coup when he expressed support for Mr. Nazarbayev’s bid to head an international elections monitoring group, undercutting American foreign policy and criticism of Kazakhstan’s poor human rights record by, among others, his wife, then a senator.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/us/cash-flowed-to-clinton-foundation-as-russians-pressed-for-control-of-uranium-company.html

7 posted on 2/8/2018, 4:33:21 PM by Faith Presses On

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