Toshiba Corporation today announced that the company would participate in the Kharassan uranium mines project, a new development project in southern Kazakhstan promoted by Kazatomprom (herein after, KAP), a Republic of Kazakhstan state-owned enterprise. Toshiba’s participation is in line with its policy of enhancing its nuclear energy business.

Kazakhstan's minister of culture and information says his country is committed to developing freedom of speech. Speaking in Vienna, Yermukhamet Yertysbaev told the Permanent Council of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe that Kazakhstan also will ratify international agreements on civil, political, cultural, and economic rights.

Four non-governmental organizations in the United States have called on the Bush administration to ban Kazakhstan from nuclear technologies and from buying 10% in the Westinghouse nuclear power company from Japan's Toshiba.

Kazakhstan is a modern, secular state promoting ethnic and religious diversity and tolerance. VOA's Valer Gergely reports from Kazakhstan that Islam, Russian and Ukrainian Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Jewish and other religions peacefully coexist in the republic. VOA's Carol Pearson tells the story for producer Valer Gergely.

Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev officially dissolved the Mazhilis today and scheduled new elections for August. Zhuldyz Toleu of RFE/RL's Kazakh Service was at the Nur-Otan meeting when Nazarbaev made the announcement.

Kazakhstan's president proposed Sunday setting up a forum to coordinate policies of the European Union and the post-Soviet alliance.

Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev proposed building a canal between the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea to ease Central Asian trade with world markets.

The presidents of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, Nursultan Nazarbaev and Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, have held talks that both sides hope will lay the basis for close cooperation between their resource-rich Central Asian countries.

Cameco Corporation (TSX: CCO) (NYSE: CCJ) announced on May 28th that it has signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding (MOU) with National Atomic Company Kazatomprom to co-operate on the development of uranium conversion capacity and to pursue additional uranium production.

Kazakhstan's Interior Ministry today announced it has issued an international arrest warrant through Interpol for former Ambassador to Austria Rakhat Aliev.

The U.S. State Department says recent amendments to Kazakhstan's constitution, which include a change allowing the president to stay in office for life, represent on the whole a step in the right direction.

The Kazakh parliament has voted overwhelmingly to change the constitution to allow President Nursultan Nazarbaev to serve for an unlimited number of terms. A joint session of both houses of parliament approved the change today to exempt the country's first president from a bar on holding the post for more than two terms in a row.