RUSSIAN and Kazakh experts explained why they did not like the recent nuclear tests in India and Pakistan at an anti-nuclear conference. "We are still suffering from the radiation effects of nuclear tests carried out by Russia and China," said Tatiana Leschenko, an eye specialist and president of the Union of Nuclear Tests Victims in Barnaul, capital of Russia Altay region. Kazakhstan has witnessed more than 400 test explosions between 1949 and 1989.

Alexander Leschenko, a former Soviet officer who joined the anti-nuclear movement in 1989 while still in services admitted: "I knew about the problems of my fellow armymen who served on Semipalatinsk test site and illnesses of their children. Leschenko has been lobbying for a law entitling medical I compensation for officers and soldiers.