Lugar Says Some Administration Officials Undermining Bush's Efforts on Additional Protocol

Although President George W. Bush reiterated his support for a bilateral U.S. agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) last month, a key Senate leader has complained that some within the administration are not fully on board.

In a Feb. 11 speech at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C., Bush urged the Senate to “immediately” ratify an additional protocol to the U.S. safeguards agreement with the IAEA. In his May 2002 letter of transmittal for the protocol, Bush called “universal adoption” of an additional protocol “a central goal of [U.S.] nonproliferation policy.” Officials from the Departments of State, Defense, Energy, and Commerce have also offered their support, arguing during a Jan. 29 hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that U.S. adoption of the protocol would induce other countries to follow suit.

All non-nuclear-weapon states-parties to the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) have safeguards agreements with the IAEA that require detailed declarations of nuclear activities and allow IAEA inspections to ensure that those activities are not being used for illegal military purposes. As a recognized nuclear-weapon state under the NPT, the United States is under no legal obligation to accept such safeguards but has, as a matter of policy, voluntarily permitted them, albeit with broad “national security” exemptions.

The agreement that the Senate is considering is based on the 1997 Model Additional Protocol. The IAEA, after its failure to detect Iraq’s pre-1991 crash nuclear weapons program revealed weaknesses in the agency’s inspections and monitoring procedures, developed the protocol to strengthen the agency’s ability to detect clandestine nuclear activities. For example, the protocol allows agency inspectors to conduct short-notice inspections of undeclared facilities and requires states to provide more information to the IAEA about their nuclear activities. The IAEA cannot actually implement these measures in a particular country unless its government has concluded its own version of the additional protocol.

The U.S. version of the additional protocol, signed in 1998, would provide the IAEA with nonmilitary information on U.S. research, development, enrichment, and reprocessing activities; locations and capacity of fissile material production sites; export and import of nuclear material; and uses of fissile material and waste products. The agreement, however, allows the United States to invoke a provision called the “national security exclusion” to deny the IAEA access to “activities with direct national security significance…or to locations or information associated with such activities.” The United States has the “sole discretion” in determining whether it can invoke the exclusion. In the event that it does allow IAEA inspectors into a facility, the United States will be able to use “managed access” to limit the inspectors’ activities.

In addition, Washington can also employ “managed access” to protect “proliferation-sensitive” and “proprietary or commercially sensitive information” in military and commercial nuclear facilities.

During the Jan. 29 hearing, administration officials emphasized repeatedly that Washington intends to limit the IAEA’s inspection powers in the United States. For example, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Mark Esper pointed out that the national security exclusion allows the United States to “exclude information and activities from declarations and deny access to IAEA inspectors anytime, anyplace.”

Despite these limitations, Assistant Secretary of State Susan Burk argued that IAEA inspections in the United States still have value because they serve a “political purpose of underscoring U.S. support for the [nuclear nonproliferation] regime.”

Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) stated during a Feb. 12 hearing that “in coming weeks” the committee “intends to report the resolution of ratification...to the Senate.” A Senate aide told Arms Control Today Feb. 23 that the committee is working on the resolution and discussing it with the administration.

Bush transmitted the agreement to the Senate in May 2002, and the administration delivered the implementing legislation to Congress last November. Defense Department concerns over the extent of the protocol’s oversight provisions delayed an interagency agreement on the legislation, but the department now publicly supports the agreement. (See ACT, December 2003.)

During the hearings, however, Lugar alleged that some administration officials are still attempting to stall ratification, and he asked Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was testifying before the committee, to “inform the president that we are eager [to act on the protocol], and perhaps he can inform the rest of his administration to work with us.”