When the IAEA was born

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The Conference and a Battle

At last, on 23 September 1956, the draft Statute was presented to a gather-ing of 81 countries at the Headquarters of the United Nations. It was decided that a two thirds majority would be necessary for amending the Statute, so that the final version adopted on 23 October did not differ much from the text which had been drafted in Washington six months previously.

Most proposed amendments were withdrawn or did not obtain the two thirds majority necessary for acceptance. That was particularly so in the case of the fundamental amendments proposed by the Soviet Union and its allies: admission of the People’s Republic of China as a founder member; demands for additional guarantees that the sovereignty of States would be respected; budgetary limitations; a demand that a three quarters majority be required in financial matters; a proposal that the agency should be able to acquire instal-lations and equipment only if they were provided in the form of gifts.
The most controversial issue was that of the scope of safeguards. The principle of safeguards was criticized by many countries (several of them from the Third World) which tried to exempt natural uranium. They likened safeguards to neo-colonialism, pointing out that in general the nuclear weapons powers would be exempted since, owing to their advanced stage of development, they would never have to request the assistance of the new agency.

India spearheaded the opposition to a very strict application of safe-guards and France, which I represented, supported it by proposing a relaxa-tion of safeguards on natural uranium and urging that safeguards should not be so severe as to deter future member countries from turning to the new agency for help.

India’s position was stated clearly by Dr. Homi Bhabha, who enjoyed great personal prestige. He was opposed above all to a perpetuation of safeguards applied to successive generations of nuclear materials, which was very likely to occur in the case of his country, which possessed nuclear materials but needed assistance in order to embark on a nuclear programme. He pointed to the illusory nature of strict safeguards and emphasized that any aid in the nuclear field—be it training opportunities or nuclear materials—was poten-tially military aid since it might allow a country to switch resources to a military programme. At the Conference, he proposed that the new agency give assistance only to those countries which did not have military programmes—defined as programmes in the field of nuclear and thermonuclear explosives and radiological weapons, but not including military nuclear propulsion.

Lastly, the point on which the Indian delegate stated that he would be most intransigent, to the extent of categorical opposition, was the new agency’s right under Article XII.A.5, in respect of all facilities subjected to its safeguards, “to decide on the use of all special fissionable materials recovered or produced as a by-product and to require that such special fissionable mate-rials be deposited with the Agency, except for those quantities which the Agency allows to be retained for specified non-military purposes under con-tinuing Agency safeguards.” Such power in the hands of the new agency might well give it too strong a hold on a country’s economy if the latter were based on nuclear power generation following an effort to which the new agency had contributed only in the initial stages.

Negotiations took place throughout the Conference between the US and the Indian delegations. The US delegation, which had consulted the Secretary of State and had his backing, refused to modify its position to any appreciable extent.

On 19 October 1956, the day the Conference was to end with a vote on Article XII, the Soviet Union, which had not yet declared its position, joined its allies, which had come out clearly on the side of India. Seeing that the vote might lead to an impasse or to approval of the US line by a slight majority, I and my Swiss colleague, Minister August Lindt, permanent observer at the United Nations, decided to table a compromise amendment. This amendment, the form of which was modified slightly the day after it had been tabled, gave a country the right to retain, from the fissionable materials which it had pro-duced, those quantities which it considered necessary for its research activi-ties and for fuelling the nuclear reactors which it already possessed or was constructing.

The US delegation requested 48 hours for reflection and the matter was put before Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and US Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Admiral Lewis Strauss. After discussions which lasted throughout Sunday 21 October and in which the Canadian delegation’s influence worked in favour of acceptance of the compromise, while the British delegation tended to be intransigent, the three Anglo-Saxon delegations accepted the Franco-Swiss proposal, to which the Indian delegation agreed in its turn at the beginning of the night. The Indian delegation, in recognition of
the way in which we had helped it, stopped pressing its proposal that the new agency should assist only countries which did not have a military programme.

The next day Article XII was voted on and adopted unanimously. A failure of the Conference had thus been narrowly avoided and the last obstacle to the establishment of the International Atomic Energy Agency and its safeguards, fundamental elements in the present world policy of non-proliferation, had been overcome.

Bertrand Goldschmidt, was born in 1912 and educated in Paris. After graduating from the Ecole de Physique et de Chimie, he was recruited in 1933, the year before her death, by Marie Curie, as her personal assistant at the Institut du Radium, Paris. He participated in the founding of the Commissariat a l’Energie Atomique in France in 1946. Ten years later he headed the French delegation to the IAEA’s Statute Conference. He served as the French Governor to the IAEA Board for 23 years. Bertrand Goldschmidt died in 2002.
To read the IAEA Statute or more about the IAEA’s history, visit www.iaea.org.

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