ElBaradei intervention to BoG

I apologize for my relative silence as of late. A lot of things have been going on at VERTIC. In June, we participated in the first ever on-site inspection exercise between a nuclear- and a non-nuclear weapon state. It was a massive logistical operation, mostly undertaken by the Norwegians that resulted in a success – at least from an organizational point of view. Lessons learned will now be extrapolated by teams on both sides of the North Sea, and VERTIC will play its own part as independent observer. I'll give more information on that at a later date.

My readers will also know that I have taken over the role of Chief Executive Officer of VERTIC. Angela Woodward will continue work as a Programme Director in the years to come, but I will assume all responsibility vis-à-vis the Board of Trustees. This blog will continue as my own personal contribution to the arms control debate, so nothing written here should or could be associated with VERTIC's Board.

Did anyone else see that Mohamed ElBaradei intervened at the meeting of his own Board in June? His comments are very interesting, especially since he's the outgoing Director-General. This means, perhaps, that he can inject a bit of personal flavor into his remarks. There is a lot of very interesting stuff in his remarks, and he is forthright, to the brink of being undiplomatic. For instance, ElBaradei said that:

We reported North Korean non-compliance in 1992 - today it's 2009. For seventeen years, we have been dealing with the verification issue in North Korea. This should teach us a lesson on how not to deal with verification issues. If every verification issue took us 20 years to clarify, then we are obviously on the wrong track. I would even dare to say that we are not very useful.

Strong words from the Director-General. He is making a point that the verification process is dependent on underlying issues of transparency and trust. And this is, of course, true. The effectiveness of a verification regime is dependent on several factors, but two stand out: the clarity of the norm to be verified and the level of cooperation afforded by the inspected state party. North Korea, as many will recall, has withdrawn from the NPT, but the IAEA, lacking direction from its member states, still applies North Korea's comprehensive safeguards agreement. The issues outstanding in 1992 are still outstanding today. Agency activities for the last seventeen years have been to monitor other things than compliance with the safeguards agreement. He emphasized time and time again the importance of the Additional Protocol for the viability of Agency inspections:

I made it very clear ten years ago that without the Additional Protocol, we cannot really do our work in a credible way. Without an Additional Protocol, we can only talk about declared nuclear material. We have learned since 1991 in Iraq, that if any country tries to divert nuclear material, they don´t divert from declared material, they divert through a clandestine programme. And yet we still have over 100 countries without Additional Protocols, which means we do not have the authority. We are sometimes called the "watchdog," but we don´t bark at all if we don´t have the legal authority to do the work.

Making a reference to the absence of a magic wand, ElBaradei makes a stern remark about the nature of his secretariat's reports.

We don´t have a magic wand and our legal authority, in many cases, is very limited. That´s why we have to be very careful of what we say. I cannot say that a country is absolutely clean if I don´t have all the tools that allow me to do that. We learned from Iraq how jumping the gun can lead to total disaster. You have to understand that every statement we issue here goes through at least twenty drafts because we have to be as objective and impartial as humanly possible. We know the implications of what we say.

Perhaps he would be willing to borrow my wand? According to some, it has the power to change foreign policy at an instant. ElBaradei also makes a stern comment on Iran:

We have been working in Iran for six years. We have made a lot of important progress. There is no question about that. Loads of people criticized what we call the "work plan," saying we were trying to stretch the process. With the work plan, however, we managed to clarify the scope and nature of the enrichment. That was a major achievement. And the Security Council in the end paid tribute to the work plan. The work plan clarified the enrichment programme in Iran, but because of the confidence deficit, we very much need the additional protocol. It´s not because it´s obligatory but because I need the additional protocol to be sure that there are no undeclared activities in Iran, as happened in the past. That is a normal common sense approach.

He singles out enrichment as the most pressing issue to be resolved.

Enrichment is, of course, the crux of the problem. Nobody, I think, questions anybody´s right to have a fuel cycle, not even the Security Council. One of the ideas I put forward a couple of years ago, which I repeated yesterday, is: with the new overture coming from Washington, why can´t we go for a freeze-for-freeze? Why is there a rush now for Iran to build its enrichment capability in terms of industrial capacity? There is no commercial need for it right now. You have the technology, and I´ve said that publicly. There is no reason to continue to build that capacity and there is also, if we are going into a negotiation, no reason to have additional sanctions applied. Negotiation should not be limited to the nuclear issue but should include security issues, economic issues and many other issues that span over 50 years. To me, a freeze-for-freeze would be a very important step which might calm down the atmosphere so that the international community will not be worried that Iran is building up capacity and LEU. And Iran cannot really lose because it has the knowledge and has demonstrated that it has the capacity. We need to look forward and we do not need to continue to have this kabuki dance where we keep repeating the same thing, shuffling our papers and shuffling our statements. It doesn´t really help anybody, frankly.

But he also makes a strong case for Iranian cooperation on the alleged weaponization studies. While expressing regret over the fact that some government will not have the information transmitted to the Iranian side, he casts no doubt on how seriously he's viewing the uncovered information.

… there is enough in these alleged studies to create concern in the minds of our professional inspectors, who work twenty-four hours a day on this issue. Although sixteen U.S. intelligence agencies said Iran stopped alleged work on nuclear weapons studies in 2003, we do not know whether it has stopped or not. We continue to receive new information. We also do not know whether the information is authentic or not. These are important issues. Naturally we cannot make a quick conclusion. These are issues of war and peace.

So what is ElBaradei's solution to the problems? It's simple. He is calling on the states concerned to show more transparency. Not because that's in the interest of the international community, but rather because it's in the interest of the state concerned.

To me the whole of non-proliferation, of verification, is about transparency. If we don´t have the additional protocol, we have limited authority. We also have limited authority because our focus is only on nuclear material. If we go into weaponization, our authority is almost negligible. Here I would like to talk about Syria. If Syria wants to prove that the allegations are not accurate, the best thing it can do is to be fully transparent. We are ready to work with any modality to protect Syria´s confidential military and non-military information, as we are ready to do with every country. But it is in every country´s interest, if it is clean, to work with us through transparency measures, if needed. I deplored Israel for not giving us a chance to verify this facility before it was destroyed. Not many of you did. I did, and I continue to do so because we lost a very important opportunity.

Finally, he outlines, in no uncertain terms, the challenges facing the IAEA today. And these challenges should neither be underestimated nor brushed under the carpet. They need to be addressed effectively, and quickly, by the IAEA membership.

We have, in many cases, very limited authority. We don´t have the technology. We are very short of satellite imagery. In many cases, we don´t get it when we ask for it. We are not able to validate environmental particle analysis. These are issues at the heart of our independence and credibility. I am grateful to the US for committing US$ 10 million in additional extra budgetary contributions to the Agency, but I do not understand those who continue to insist on zero budget growth despite all our efforts to achieve efficiency gains and savings. I am not willing to tell world public opinion that we are able to deal with issues that have to do with our very survival when I know that we are not able to.

As it were, General Sir Hugh Beach, one of my trustees will be writing about this in the April-June issue of Trust & Verify. In the same issue, I will focus on Iran. Without revealing too much of what I've written, I can only conclude that my own views are very similar to ElBaradei's on these matters. The good doctor even managed to put in some catchy final words, which would sound familiar to a CEO of any organization governed by a board, irrespective of size: "As to how we write our reports, that´s our business. We are not co-managing safeguards. You delegated us to manage safeguards and we´ve continued to manage safeguards with as much impartiality, as much objectivity as we can".

I don't know what you think, but I am going to miss him after he steps down. And I do apologize to him and his team if I quoted something out of context.