Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev will attend the July summit of the Group of Eight (G8) industrialized nations in St. Petersburg, Russia.

In an interview with Kazakh news media, President Nazarbayev said: “As the current CIS chair and as a country with extensive energy resources, Kazakhstan was invited to attend the G8 summit in St. Petersburg.”

Kazakhstan assumed the rotating chairmanship of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a group of former Soviet republics, earlier in May. Kazakhstan has been a leader in economic reforms and resulting growth among the CIS countries, seeing its economy grow by 75 percent during the past seven years and its companies starting to invest heavily across the CIS, focusing on Kyrgyzstan, Georgia and Russia.

Energy security has been the theme during Russia's annual chairmanship of the G8 starting in early 2006. Kazakhstan, with estimated reserves of 100 billion barrels of oil and 200 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and oil exports of one million barrels a day, is increasingly becoming one of the key players in the global energy market now jittery with continuing high oil prices.

Kazakhstan's large uranium reserves, ranked number one among the top three in the world, are also important for a world returning to the idea of expanding peaceful atomic energy production.

Leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States will gather in St. Petersburg for their annual Summit on July 15 through 17. The President of China has also been invited to attend.

News source: newkerala.com
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