US President Barack Obama met Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev on Sunday, as he set the table for his 47-nation nuclear security summit designed to deprive extremists of nuclear material.
Kazakhstan ceded its portion of a vast Cold War nuclear arsenal after the Soviet Union collapsed, but says it is the world's leading exporter of uranium, a nuclear fuel that is at the center of the summit, which opens Monday.
Obama and Nazarbayev met at Blair House, across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House, and US officials said they discussed non-proliferation, trade, Afghanistan and European security.
US officials said that the nuclear summit will focus primarily on the threat posed by global stocks of uranium and separated plutonium, which they fear terror groups could acquire and seek to use to build a nuclear bomb.
Kazakhstan said last year that it had overtaken Canada to become the world's leading exporter of uranium after it increased production by 63 percent in 2009.
US officials said that they wanted to deepen their work with the Kazakh government to decommission one nuclear reactor and to convert another that uses highly enriched uranium to a material that could not be used to make bombs.
"The US appreciates the leadership of President Nazarbayev and the contribution of Kazakhstan to nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation," the two leaders said in a joint statement.
Obama and Nazarbayev also talked about enhancing the role of Kazakhstan in the "northern distribution network" to supply Afghanistan and welcomed a new bilateral deal to allow US cargo flights through Kazakh air space.
Last year, Kazakhstan denied it planned to sell purified uranium ore to Iran, which is currently locked in a nuclear showdown with the United States, and the West.
The United States had said that such a transfer would be prohibited under United Nations sanctions on Iran, which Washington and its allies are currently attempting to stiffen.
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