Disarmament and Arms Control Minister Phil Goff, today attended a ceremony in Washington DC marking New Zealand’s contribution to a US-led G-8 project to train and equip Ukrainian border officials to prevent cross-border movement of nuclear and radioactive material.

“New Zealand is strongly committed to playing its part in preventing the illicit spread of materials capable of being used in weapons of mass destruction”, Mr Goff said.

“This is the third project that New Zealand has supported and the second time that we have worked with the US within the framework of the G-8 Global Partnership against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction.”

The Global Partnership supports cooperation projects, currently in Russia and the Ukraine, addressing non-proliferation, disarmament, counter-terrorism and nuclear safety issues in the former Soviet Union in order to prevent terrorists gaining access to weapons or materials of mass destruction.

“In 2004, New Zealand funded a project to help build a facility to destroy stockpiles of chemical weapons in Shchuch’ye in Siberia, Russia. Last year we cooperated with the US on a project working to shut down the last plutonium-producing nuclear reactor in Zheleznogorsk, Russia.”

“This time, New Zealand funding of over NZ$680,000 will help the US Department of Energy to train officials and provide better detection equipment on the Ukraine-Russia border.”

“This is an important focus for the international community. There have been a number of incidents of trafficking nuclear material from the post-Soviet republics. Clearly, it is in all our interests to work with those republics to improve their capacity to combat such activities.”

“This project, which will involve the US Department of Energy, the State Customs Service of Ukraine and the State Border Service of Ukraine, is a substantive contribution to achieving this goal”.

“I look forward to another successful partnership between New Zealand and the US through this project”, Phil Goff said.