Pursuant to its obligations under the Safeguards Agreement with Iraq in connection with the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is sending a five-person team to Baghdad next week in order to verify the nuclear materials that remain there.
While all weapon-usable nuclear material (plutonium and high enriched uranium) has been removed from Iraq in accordance with United Nations Security Council resolution 687 (1991), Iraq has still about 1.8 tonnes of low enriched uranium (2.6%) as well as several tonnes of natural and depleted uranium. The present inspection has the limited objective of verifying that nuclear material and is prompted by the inability of the IAEA since 15 December 1998 to resume its verification activities in Iraq under the relevant Security Council resolutions and to implement as part of those activities its obligations under the NPT Safeguards Agreement with Iraq.
The present inspection is not a substitute for the IAEA’s verification activities in Iraq under the relevant Security Council resolutions. The implementation of activities authorized by the Security Council continues to be essential if the IAEA is to fulfil the mandate entrusted to it by the Council and provide the necessary assurances the Council seeks. Thus, the dispatch of this safeguards mission does not obviate the need for the IAEA to proceed as soon as possible with the resumption of its inspection activities in Iraq under the relevant Security Council resolutions, in particular the carrying out of the IAEA’s plan for ongoing monitoring and verification.
The team is expected to begin its work in Iraq at the end of next week and to return to Vienna by the end of the month.