U.S. Senate Approves IAEA Additional Protocol

By Mike Nartker
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate unanimously approved a resolution yesterday ratifying the Additional Protocol to the U.S. nuclear safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (see GSN, March 4).

The Additional Protocol, which the United States signed in 1998, would give the agency the authority to conduct more activity at U.S. civilian nuclear facilities. President George W. Bush earlier this year called on the Senate to approve the measure as quickly as possible; his signature is needed to ratify the protocol.

Supporters of the Additional Protocol said that the major benefit of U.S. ratification would be in setting an example for other countries to follow.

“The Additional Protocol, when universally ratified and implemented by all member states of the IAEA, will not solve all of our proliferation problems, but Senate ratification will further ensure that U.S. efforts to persuade all member states to adopt the Additional Protocol will be supported by concrete U.S. action,” Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) said yesterday on the Senate floor, as cited in the Congressional Record.

Senator Joseph Biden (Del.), the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, yesterday noted past examples in which other countries were willing to support international nonproliferation agreements after the United States signed on.

“Our willingness to accept IAEA safeguards helped to secure the world’s agreement to the NPT [Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty]. Similarly, our stated willingness to accept the Additional Protocol was crucial to gaining the world’s agreement, in 1995, to the indefinite extension of the NPT. And our ratification of the Additional Protocol will strengthen our ability to convince more non-nuclear weapons states to sign their own additional protocols,” Biden said, as cited in the Congressional Record.

Lugar said the Additional Protocol would not affect the U.S. nuclear weapons program because the United States has the right to exclude the application of IAEA safeguards. He also said that the Bush administration assured his committee that the likelihood of the IAEA conducting an inspection within the United States was “very low.”

The resolution ratification contains several provisions to ensure that the Additional Protocol does not infringe on U.S. national security, according to Biden. For example, the president must certify to Congress that all necessary regulations are in place and site vulnerability assessments are completed within 180 days of the measure’s entry into force. The ratification resolution also addresses issues such as protection of classified information, the U.S. intent to use its special rights as a declared nuclear weapons state and the addition or deletion of declared sites to the agency, Biden said.

“In short, the committee has covered all the bases to ensure that adoption of the Additional Protocol will support our nuclear nonproliferation policy without endangering sensitive national security information,” he said.

Biden also warned yesterday, though, that the Additional Protocol may not be sufficient to stop countries seeking to develop nuclear weapons under the guise of civilian programs. In such a “breakout” scenario, according to Biden, a country could develop the necessary infrastructure and materials all under IAEA safeguards, and then quickly withdraw from the NPT and begin weapons production.

Several proposals have been made in recent months to address such a scenario (see GSN, Feb. 12). IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei called for multilateral facilities to be responsible for the enrichment and reprocessing of nuclear fuel. For his part, Bush proposed that members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group refuse to sell enrichment and reprocessing equipment and technologies to any state that does not already possess full-scale, functioning enrichment and reprocessing plants. The group is a 40-member organization that establishes export control regulations for nuclear trade. 

Biden said the United States and other countries should reach a “consensus” on the issue before next year’s scheduled NPT Review Conference. “We have a window of opportunity, and we should use it,” he said.

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