Call for Security Council meeting on Afghanistan

President Nursultan Nazarbayev urged the UN Security Council to hold a special meeting to address how it can stabilise the situation in Afghanistan and Central Asia. “Afghanistan has turned into a world trouble spot,” Nazarbayev said in his address to the UN millennium summit in New York on Wednesday. “This question was raised by the heads of state of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan at a recent meeting in Bishkek, in which Russia also took part,” Nazarbayev went on to say. “They urged the UN and the world community to render assistance in normalizing the situation in Afghanistan,” Nazarbayev said. “Instability and poverty in that country have turned its territory into a hotbed of extremism and international terrorism, not only in Central Asia but the whole world,” the Kazakh president said.