The future of nuclear verification. Remarks of the Director General, Dr. Hans Blix at the closing session of the IAEA symposium on international safeguards. Vienna, 17 October 1997

The paper identifies some of the IAEA policy issues concerning safeguards which seem to me will remain, or become, important to the future of nuclear verification. The global political climate is conducive to further use of international verification of non proliferation commitments which is becoming increasingly important. The Agency's work in verifying non-proliferation commitments will clearly remain a central part of its future work. The immediate priorities in the field of nuclear verification are set out in the measures adopted in recent years and in the Additional Protocol. The sooner the Protocol is widely adopted, the sooner the benefits of increased effectiveness and efficiency will be realized. In addition to the practicalities of acceptance and implementation of the new measures, considerable thought must still be given to the methods of assessing the results of this work and presenting those results to Governments and the public. We have struggled with these questions in the past - but there are now new considerations which will make the task even more difficult. The experience of Agency safeguards over recent years has included: establishing safeguards in major new countries of the former Soviet Union, some of which had nuclear weapons on their territory; observing the status of South Africa's former weapon programme; the operations in Iraq and DPRK; the roles acquired in connection with new nuclear weapon free zones in Africa and South East Asia; and the strengthening of the safeguards system itself. These experiences have broadened the horizons of the Secretariat and of Member States, provided us with new tools and given grounds for confidence that other new tasks could be tackled beyond the traditional non proliferation role. One possible task is related to the Trilateral Initiative - trilateral discussions started in September last year. The objective is an agreement between the US and Russia and the IAEA on verification by the IAEA of nuclear material which is transferred out of the defence sectors in the US and Russia, notably that from dismantled nuclear weapons. The revelations of recent years of breaches to non-proliferation undertakings have been quickly acted on by the international community. The system of international safeguards has been changed and, once the provisions of the Additional Protocol are accepted by States, the assurance provided will be greatly enhanced. Other elements of the non-proliferation regime, such as the NSG, have also been upgraded