ElBaradei Pushes Iran, Others for Greater Cooperation

By Greg Webb
Global Security Newswire

VIENNA — One day after securing his third term at the helm of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei outlined several challenges he faces in the next four years. He delivered his assessment this morning to a quarterly meeting of the agency’s Board of Governors (see GSN, June 13).

Topping ElBaradei’s responsibilities will be investigating Iran’s nuclear activities, and he pushed Tehran today to provide more access to agency inspectors. Since 2003, when it admitted to an extensive clandestine effort to enrich uranium, Iran has allowed agency personnel to document what it says is a peaceful program. ElBaradei has persistently asked for more disclosure. He has been pushed in part by senior U.S. officials who argue that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program.

“Iran has provided some additional documentation and information, which are not yet sufficient to answer several remaining questions,” ElBaradei told the board today. 

In particular, ElBaradei asked Iran to allow inspectors to return to two sites the United States has said are involved with nuclear weapon work, Lavizan and Parchin (see GSN, Feb. 7). Agency officials have conducted some limited-access visits to the military sites, but Iran has refused follow-up visits. U.S. officials have said they suspect the sites house programs to develop the high-explosive charges used to trigger nuclear weapons.

ElBaradei also said he wants more information on how Iran acquired equipment for its uranium enrichment centrifuge program from an international smuggling network once headed by Pakistan’s top nuclear scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan.

“We have continued to press for additional documentation regarding offers of equipment made to Iran, as well as for information on associated technical discussions between Iran and intermediaries in the procurement network,” he said.

For the first time, ElBaradei publicly endorsed a U.S. call to create a special Board of Governors committee “to consider ways and means to strengthen the safeguards system” of international inspections.  He urged the board “to act on this proposal” this week.

The U.S. push for the committee began earlier this year and reflects official statements that the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty regime and the safeguards system that enforces it have failed to curb proliferators. At last month’s NPT review conference, the United States pushed for pact members to consider more rigorous treaty compliance mechanisms.

ElBaradei echoed some of those themes today.

“A new committee would usefully explore how the safeguards system could be further strengthened. Areas that could be addressed should, in my view, include more information sharing, the use of emerging technologies, enhancing the agency’s independent analytical capabilities and ensuring that the agency has an adequate and uniform legal authority to conduct credible verification,” he said.

ElBaradei reported that the agency determined last year that four nations had failed to report past nuclear activities. Although ElBaradei’s statement did not identify them, agency officials here confirmed that they were South Korea (see GSN, Nov. 26, 2004); Egypt (see GSN, March 2), Taiwan (see GSN, Oct. 13, 2004) and Libya (see GSN, March 14).

In the first three cases, the nations claimed the reporting failures were oversights. The disclosures followed more stringent requirements adopted by the agency following the 1991 Gulf War when inspectors discovered that Iraq had concealed a massive nuclear weapon effort.

The flagship of those post-war measures is the Additional Protocol to the nuclear safeguards agreement nations sign with the agency. The protocol empowers the agency to conduct more intrusive monitoring of nations’ nuclear activities.

ElBaradei again today called on more nations to adopt the protocol.

“Additional Protocols are central to the agency’s ability to derive safeguards conclusions,” he said, pointing out that in every nation with Additional Protocol measures in place the agency was able to confirm last year that “all nuclear material had been placed under safeguards and remained in peaceful nuclear activities or was otherwise adequately accounted for.”

ElBaradei also urged the board consider “possible remedies” to a nuclear inspections arrangement that he called “a weakness of the safeguards system” (see GSN, Apr. 27).

The Small Quantities Protocol allows nations with minimal nuclear activities to accept a reduced level of agency monitoring. Most recently, Saudi Arabia has expressed interest in adopting the protocol, to the concern of many Middle East nations (see GSN, June 13). Saudi Arabia has been the subject of many rumors of nuclear ambitions and has a small arsenal of intermediate-range ballistic missiles (see GSN, Aug. 5, 2004).

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