Several non- government organizations in Kazakhstan have set up a coalition for public control over profits generated from oil deals. Representatives of the NGOs told a Monday news conference in Almaty they had adopted a declaration urging the government to join the Extractive Industrial Transparency Initiative. A spokesman for Soros-Kazakhstan, Anton Artemyev, said the initiative was announced by British Prime Minister Tony Blair in September 2002. The goal is to provide transparency of information on payments made by extraction companies and on government revenues in countries rich in natural resources, he said. \"We are convinced that the problem described as \'the curse of resources\' is rooted in the absence of proper transparency and due pubic control over decision-making on the distribution of revenues,\" he said. Giving his reasons for the initiative, Artemyev said that \"the terms of the contracts the government has signed with extraction companies are closed even to parliament members.\" (Interfax-Kazakhstan)