The former Soviet republic of Belarus announced Wednesday that it will give up its stockpile of material used to make nuclear weapons by 2012.

The arrangement was announced on the sidelines of an international security meeting in the Central Asian nation of Kazakhstan by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and her Belarussian counterpart, Sergei Martynov.

The announcement is a significant step forward in efforts aimed at keeping nuclear materials out of the hands of terrorists, and follows similar commitments made by other former Soviet republics, including Kazakhstan.

In a written statement with Martynov, Clinton said Washington will provide technical and financial help to enable Belarus to dispose of its highly enriched uranium stocks. The amount of material was not mentioned but is believed to be enough to make at least several nuclear bombs.

Belarus in 1994 gave up the nuclear weapons it inherited in the breakup of the Soviet Union, but it retained its highly enriched uranium stocks.

Washington has had chilly relations with Belarus.

In July, in an address to an international conference in Poland on democracy and human rights, Clinton cited Belarus as among countries across the globe where a "steel vise" of suppression is "slowly crushing civil society and the human spirit."

The announcement in Astana did not mention the amount of highly enriched uranium that Belarus possesses. The Interfax news agency in Belarus quoted President Alexander Lukashenko in April as saying his country has "hundreds of kilograms" of weapon-grade as well as low-enriched uranium, and that it was being used only for research purposes.

According to the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, Belarus has 170 kilograms (375 pounds) of highly enriched uranium at its Sosny nuclear research institute, but other unofficial sources have made estimates as low as 40 kilograms (88 pounds), which would be enough to make at least several nuclear bombs.

Wednesday's announcement is a step toward a highly ambitious goal _ set at a nuclear security summit meeting in Washington in April _ of securing all nuclear weapons material worldwide within four years. Belarus, along with Iran and North Korea, were not invited to the April summit because of their refusal to cooperate on security nuclear material.

With its decision to give up its highly enriched uranium, Belarus has secured an invitation to the next scheduled nuclear security summit, to be hosted by South Korea in 2012, the joint U.S.-Belarus statement said.