04/06/10 UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon at the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site in Kazakhstan: “It’s a sobering experience for me, to stand on the Ground Zero where so many nuclear tests were conducted. I was told that 456 nuclear tests were conducted here with a terrible effect on human lives and environmental consequences. We should not repeat this kind of legacy – this is an awful legacy. And I highly commend the extraordinary leadership of president Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan, who courageously closed this nuclear test site and initiated the nuclear weapon-free zone in Central Asia. That’s a big milestone.”

[quoted from interview with EuroNews.]