Kazakhstan will receive some 20 million dollars by the end of this year and another 20 million dollars in 2004 for the construction of a new anti-plague laboratory in the former Soviet republic, Senator Richard Lugar said.

A four-year-old girl died of bubonic plague last week in southern Kazakhstan. Three people were hospitalised with the same disease in western Kazakhstan at the end of July.

Also, several anthrax cases were detected in southern Kazakhstan in July after a sick horse was slaughtered and its meat distributed among villagers.

Lugar, who is chairman of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, also discussed non-proliferation and arms control issues with Kazakh Foreign Minister Kasymzhomart Tokayev and Energy Minister Vladimir Shkolnik.

In 1991, Lugar and then senator Sam Nunn co-sponsored the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, aimed at reducing the international threat of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.

The legislation serves as the basis for US non-proliferation assistance to the former Soviet republics and has helped to bring some 200 million dollars in aid to Kazakhstan since 1992.

Kazakhstan, which inherited the worlds fourth largest nuclear arsenal after the collapse of the Soviet Union, has vowed to terminate its nuclear programs and has joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Since then, Kazakhstan has removed all nuclear weapons from its territory and destroyed associated infrastructure, including the Semipalatinsk polygon, the site of some 500 nuclear tests.

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