Biography

Kanat Bekmurzayevich Saudabayev

Kanat Saudabayev was appointed Secretary of State – Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Kazakhstan by the Decree of President Nursultan Nazarbayev on September 4, 2009. One of the most important and immediate tasks for him as determined by the President is Kazakhstan’s chairmanship in the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in 2010.

From 2007 to that appointment, he served as Kazakhstan’s Secretary of State, a top position in the presidential administration. As Secretary of State he has developed and continues to develop for the President proposals on main dimensions of domestic and foreign policies. He coordinates the activities of numerous bodies under the President, including the Assembly of People of Kazakhstan, commissions on human rights, the fight against corruption, state symbols, state awards, citizenship, as well as on educating personnel abroad under the Bolashak scholarship, among others.

From 2000 to 2007, Kanat Saudabayev served as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Kazakhstan to the United States of America, where he brought an important contribution to the strengthening of the strategic partnership between Kazakhstan and the USA in the spheres of security, economy and democratic development. At that time he also held concurrent accreditation as Kazakhstan’s ambassador to Canada.

Before his appointment to the U.S., Kanat Saudabayev had a long career in the fields of government, diplomacy and the arts.

In 1999 and 2000, he served as the head of the Prime Minister’s Office with the rank of Cabinet member.

In the 1990s, he served as Kazakhstan’s Ambassador to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and to Turkey.

During 1994, as the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Saudabayev worked to implement the developing foreign policy of the young independent state. He was Kazakhstan’s signatory to NATO’s Partnership for Peace agreement.

In the fall of 1991, President Mikhail S. Gorbachev appointed Kanat Saudabayev as the Soviet Ambassador to Turkey. As he was planning to take up his post, the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Within months Kanat Saudabayev was on his way to Turkey again, but as the first Ambassador from an independent Kazakhstan to foreign country.

Working in Moscow from September 1991 through May 1992 as the Plenipotentiary Representative of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic to the USSR, and then, after the Soviet Union collapsed, to the new Russian republic, Kanat Saudabayev was a direct participant in and a witness to many crucial events of that time.

Before entering the diplomatic service, Kanat Saudabayev had a distinguished cultural career, serving as Kazakhstan’s Chairman of the State Committee of Culture with the rank of Minister, Chairman of the State Film Committee, and Deputy Culture Minister. He began his career as a theatrical producer.

Kanat Saudabayev holds degrees from the Leningrad Institute of Culture and the Academy of Public Sciences of the Central Committee of Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He has a PhD in Philosophy from the Kazakh State University and a PhD in Political Science from the Moscow State University. His service has been recognized by the Order of Otan (Fatherland), Kazakhstan’s highest state award, and the Order of Kurmet (Honour).

Kanat Saudabayev was born in the Almaty region in 1946.