Struan Stevenson: Let Kazakhstan's curse curb world appetite for nuclear weapons

Mr Obama and his Russian counterpart, Dmitri Medvedev, last week set the tone for the conference with their historic announcement to reduce their nuclear arsenals – a move seen by many as a sign of detente following a period of heightened tensions between the former Cold War foes.

No amount of bonhomie, however, can disguise the growing appetite for possession of nuclear weapons globally. North Korea claims to have already developed such weapons of mass destruction, while Iran appears intent on producing them as well – to widespread international consternation.

But another Asian nation has demonstrated an alternative path. In Kazakhstan, President Nursultan Nazarbayev has for two decades led the fight against nuclear weapons and proliferation.

Last week I was in Kazakhstan with the UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon. We visited the area around Semipalatinsk in the east of the country, once the epicentre of the USSR's nuclear war machine and home to some of the true casualties of the Cold War.

In Soviet times it was secretively referred to as "the Polygon". It's an area I have been visiting for 11 years.

The region saw 40 years of uninterrupted nuclear weapons testing, witnessing 607 nuclear explosions above and below ground. The force of these explosions was equivalent to 20,000 Hiroshima bombs.

The 1.5 million people of the region were treated as human guinea pigs by the Soviet authorities, with KGB doctors studying the effects of radiation on their own population.

Now, cancers run at five times the national average, with those of the throat, lungs and breasts particularly common. Birth defects are three times the national average. Children are born with learning difficulties, Down's Syndrome is common and virtually all suffer from anaemia. Psychological disorders are rife and suicides are widespread, especially among young men and even, alarmingly, among children. Seepage from the underground tests has polluted watercourses, while farmland has been heavily irradiated. Radioactive contamination has entered the food chain.

After widespread protests led by Nazarbayev, Mikhail Gorbachev ordered a moratorium on all further tests in 1990, shortly before the Soviet Union finally collapsedand Kazakhstan gained its independence.

Ban Ki-moon chose Kazakhstan to call for global nuclear disarmament in recognition of President Nazarbayev's role in closing down the Soviet atomic test site on 29 August 1991 and clearing nuclear weapons from his territory. The UN secretary-general even announced that he would urge the United Nations to adopt 29 August as global "Nuclear Non-Proliferation Day".

In a recent article, President Nazarbayev said a world free of nuclear weapons is "a grandiose goal which cannot be reached in short historical terms" but can only become a reality "through joint efforts of all countries and nations".

Iran and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad should take note. Anyone tempted to develop nuclear weapons should visit the Polygon in Kazakhstan. The horrors of exposure to radioactive fallout are everywhere to be seen.

These are the reasons why the international community must continue to work towards President Nazarbayev's goal of nuclear non-proliferation.

• Struan Stevenson is an MEP and currently Personal Representative of the chairman in office of the OSCE responsible for environment and ecology.