Intervention on non-proliferation issues at IAEA Board of Governors, 17 June 2009, Vienna, Austria

The IAEA's Director General Dr. Mohamed ElBarardei reported that the IAEA has been dealing with the verification issue in North Korea for seventeen years and things have gone from bad to worse. It started to improve when there was a dialogue. When there was no dialogue, things got much worse. There was a dialogue under the agreed framework and there were no weapons, just spent fuel under an Agency freeze. When the dialogue stopped, there was a nuclear test. With the six-party framework, things started to move and there was a dismantlement and shutdown. But when the six-party talks came to a halt, there was another nuclear test and in addition there was an announcement that North Korea will also start an enrichment programme. This means that it is important to have a meaningful dialogue between parties and that they talk to each other and understand the security dimension of proliferation issues. The Director General said that he will not have anything to report at the next Board of Governors meeting since the IAEA is not in North Korea and is not part of the six party talks. Since more and more countries are going into enrichment and fuel cycle processes it is recommended that there should be total multinationalization of the fuel cycle, as part of a world free of nuclear weapons and on the basis of equality and universality. There are four pillars which have to work together: the Agency, the Security Council, multilateral dialogues and bilateral talks. What we can do can be very much influenced by the Security Council, by multilateral dialogue and by bilateral talks. The Security Council should not necessarily mean just sanctions. The Security Council is supposed to be a forum to try to find solutions. The Security Council is supposed to intervene early and do preventive measures and try to find solutions. When things are moving in the bilateral/multilateral dialogue, such as in the six-party talks, then they move here. When there is a dialogue, there is some movement. When there is no dialogue, we come to a standstill. We are completely gridlocked in both North Korea and Iran - with North Korea it is even worse, because it declared it is out of the NPT altogether. Concerning Iran there has been a confidence deficit over a number of years because of undeclared enrichment activities, even if they were experimental. There is a need to restore confidence. Iran can help the IAEA address a lot of concerns by implementing the additional protocol and by implementing the safeguards requirements on design information. Hopefully a meaningful dialog with Iran will start. On North Korea, there is no other solution than the diplomatic solution. Concerning the Syrian issue he stated that if Syria wants to prove that the allegations on a possible reactor are not accurate, the best thing it can do is to be fully transparent. Concerning the budget Dr. Mohamed ElBarardei said that he does not understand those countries which continue to insist on zero budget growth despite all the IAEA's efforts to achieve efficiency gains and savings. He is not willing to tell world public opinion that the Agency is able to deal with issues that have to do with our all very survival when he knows that the Agency is not able to