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Tuesday, March 26, 2024

Norwegian ambassador to visit Kazakhstan

Ole Johan Bjørnøy, the ambassador of the Kingdom of Norway, will visit Kazakhstan later this month to further bilateral cooperation between the two countries.

The two countries currently have a relationship based on oil and gas production and support in world nonproliferation and disarmament efforts, the Astana Times reports.

"Both Norway and Kazakhstan are oil and gas producing countries and both are committed to the development of emerging technologies and moving away from their resource-based economies," Bjørnøy said. "Kazakhstan is now an upper-middle income country, which puts our countries on a different level of cooperation, they are not in a donor-client relationship, but rather a partner like relationship especially when it comes to nuclear nonproliferation, where Kazakhstan set a very good example by hosting P5+1 negotiations in the past two years."

Bjørnøy is scheduled to visit Eastern Kazakhstan, Semey, Kurchatov and Ust-Kamenogorsk, which are the parts of Kazakhstan that sustained damage during 40 years of nuclear testing conducted in the country.

"Recently, I visited the Tamgaly Petroglyph site 120 kilometers from Almaty," Bjørnøy said, the Astana times reports. "It is one of the three UNESCO World Heritage sites in Kazakhstan and was added to the prestigious international list in 2004."

Bjørnøy also highlighted the country's mining industry potential. The ambassador first visited Kazakhstan in 1999. He assumed office in August 2012.