Kazakhstan, the dominant supplier of global uranium markets, achieved a partial victory in its endeavor to obtain the same rights as 160 other nations for regulating the international nuclear-fuel trade, Jonathan Tirone reported this development for Bloomberg News.
Kazakhstan is responsible for producing over two-fifths of the world's uranium. I Photo: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
Members of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) voted on Friday to examine the predicament shared by the Central Asian nation and 16 other countries currently excluded from serving on the board of governors of the Vienna-based regulator.
Kazakhstan, responsible for producing over two-fifths of the world's uranium, recently issued a legal demand in an attempt to rectify this situation, Kevin Crowley also reported on this matter for Bloomberg News.
The resolution, adopted at the IAEA's general conference, marks the "first step toward restoring justice," according to Kairat Umarov, Kazakhstan's deputy foreign minister.
The agency must now determine how to reform a Cold War-era governance structure that denies sovereign equality among all its dues-paying members.
The IAEA board convenes four times a year and is responsible for establishing rules and selecting leadership through a process that has been likened to the secretive conclave of Catholic cardinals tasked with choosing a new pope.
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