The Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Dr. Hans Blix, on the 12 November, presented a broad overview to the General Assembly in New York of the IAEA's recent activities.
Speaking to the Assembly for the last time as Director General, Dr. Blix summed up the essence of his recent submission to the Security Council on Iraq: namely, that the IAEA had been able, through its investigations since 1991, to construct a technically coherent picture of Iraq's past nuclear programme and to gain a good understanding of the scope of its achievements. But, he added, "in the face of Iraq's past practice of concealment it is not possible to guarantee that the picture is complete nor that there could not still be some concealed components, activities and facilities, which did not form part of the technically coherent picture." Continuing, he said "We have been even more concerned about the recent attempt by Iraq to limit the free choice of inspectors. We must be aware that any refusal of access could be caused by an interest to conceal something. Such refusals therefore run counter to Iraq's efforts to convince the inspectors and the world that nothing is hidden."
Turning to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), Dr. Blix said the "canning" operation of irradiated fuel rods at Nyongbyong was virtually complete and the cans were placed under IAEA monitoring. However, no progress had been made in the IAEA's technical discussions with the DPRK, notably on the preservation of information related to past nuclear activities and on verifying that there were no movements or operations involving liquid nuclear wastes from the Nyongbyon reprocessing plant frozen under the terms of the 1994 Agreed Framework with the United States. The DPRK remained in non©compliance with its IAEA safeguards inspection agreement.
Additionally under this heading, the Director General noted that the IAEA Board of Governors had approved in mid©year a Model Protocol additional to safeguards agreements which would give "added teeth" to the Agency's inspection system. A number of States had already signed, and the sooner it was broadly accepted, the sooner the benefits of more effective and more cost©efficient verification would be felt. He said "States which are anxious to have the best non©proliferation credentials should see in the acceptance of the Model Protocol a means to further this aim."
Turning to other Agency activities, the Director General welcomed recent advances in the international framework of nuclear safety: a new Convention on the safety of spent fuel management and on the safety of radioactive waste management had been adopted, and in the area of liability for nuclear accidents, existing conventions and rules had been modernized, and the amounts of compensation foreseen vastly increased. In addition, over forty States were now party to last year's Convention on the safety of nuclear installations.
On nuclear trafficking, Dr. Blix said the IAEA was actively supporting Governments in areas such as advice on appropriate legislation, standards of physical protection, administrative machinery and training. Also, the IAEA had developed a database of all known cases of trafficking and had followed up reports in the public media with official authorities.
In the course of his statement, the Director General also alluded to the growing debate on energy options in the context of curbing carbon dioxide emissions. He observed that the IAEA seemed to be the only place in the UN system where Governments referred explicitly to the benefits of nuclear power as an energy source, economically roughly competitive with coal but free of greenhouse and other toxic gas emissions. While this was well understood by Governments, they had not been ready for the most part to act on that knowledge. It was, in his view, the duty of the IAEA to seek, together with other international organizations, impartially and objectively to compile and analyse all relevant data on the different energy sources on a comparative basis so as to enable Member States to make their assessments and to shape their policies in as well informed a manner as possible.