At a joint conference with President Nursultan Nazarbayev in the Kazakh city of Uralsk, near the Russian border, Putin said his Kazakh counterpart had agreed that the Central Asian country would contribute to initiatives on forming international centers providing nuclear fuel cycle services in Russia.
Putin had proposed the idea of international uranium enrichment centers at the beginning of the year, as a means of calming international tensions over Iran's nuclear problem.
"Russia is a suitable partner for resolving such problems, given the country's highly developed nuclear energy sector, highly skilled staff, experts and comprehensive nuclear infrastructure," the president said in February.
The first international center is expected to be built in the Siberian city of Angarsk.
Kazakhstan holds 15% of the world's uranium reserves and has an expanding mining sector, which aims to hit at an annual production of 15,000 tons of uranium by 2010.
Under the Soviet system, Russia and Kazakhstan shared a nuclear power infrastructure under the Ministry of Medium Machine Building.
The head of Russia's Federal Nuclear Power Agency, Sergei Kiriyenko, said earlier in the year that the Soviet-era nuclear infrastructure needed to be restored both for domestic aims, and to meet global demand.
Last week, Kiriyenko said a delegation from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN's nuclear watchdog, would soon arrive in Moscow to continue work on establishing the international enrichment center in Angarsk.
The city, located about 5,000 kilometers (3,100 miles) east of Moscow, "has always been connected with the nuclear sector's civilian side. The enterprise in Angarsk can be put under IAEA control, and it has additional reserve capacities," he said.
