US Ambassador to the IAEA, Greg Schulte, was in London yesterday selling the US-India deal. I saw him talk at the IISS.
Given all the speculation that both the US and North Korea want the IAEA to have a minimal role in the verification process, I couldn’t resist asking the ambassador what role he thought the Agency should have. His answer surprised me.
He said that the US foresees a large role for the Agency both because it has relevant expertise and because the ultimate aim of the denuclearisation process is to get North Korea back into the NPT under IAEA safeguards. He wasn’t too specific about the exact division of labour between the US and the IAEA but he was much more positive about the Agency’s role than I had expected. He added that Chris Hill is in Vienna today discussing this issue with the DG and the safeguards people.
UPDATE: Andreas reports a contradictory picture from another discussion meeting at the IISS today. The plot thickens.
James, I’ve posted on today’s on the record meeting at the Institute. Left me more confused than before. We’ll see what MEB, Schulte and Hill comes up with today.
I think we need to be careful what we are talking about here when we discuss the IAEA role. First, I am not sure what Ralph Cossa means when he says most of the parties do not want the IAEA involved in the denuclearization process. If he means in verifying the declaration, he is not quite right. The South Koreans initial proposal was for them to play the central role but the North Koreans and the United States did not support that idea. I do not know about the other countries. Second,as Ralph surely understands, the “denuclearization process” if it happens will stretch out for almost a decade.In the long-term, who knows? And the IAEA will almost certainly have to play an important role and at some times the central role, given the likely requirement for the North to accept safeguards and to rejoin the NPT. So I am not quite sure what Ralph means.
We know that the IAEA’s recent track record is not exactly 100% when it comes to verification. We have seen the likes of ElBaradei pussyfoot with the Iranians pretending nothing is happening. The Americans simply don’t expect the IAEA to be of much help with North Korea.
Could he just be saying good things about the IAEA in the context of the Six-Party negotiations, to defuse tensions with the IAEA on the India-US deal? It would be the right thing to say, if the Bush administration wants to convince the IAEA and NSG that the deal doesn’t really hurt the non-proliferation regime, and that overall the US supports the regime.
I too would urge caution in interpreting comments by various players relating to support or otherwise for the role of the IAEA in the DPRK process.
Public comments on the IAEA’s involvement in the imminent verification stage have been made by all of the parties excluding the DPRK. However, these have often either been carefully worded or sufficiently vague to allow interpretation as meaning anything between everything and nothing.
Some insight into real support or objection might be given if it became clear which country/ies were responsible for editing Thursday’s ASEAN statement to remove the call for “a leading role for the IAEA” in the verification process. Anybody in the know care to shed light on this?
Also useful to view Schulte’s statements by the perspective of bureaucratic politics. He is the Ambassador to the IAEA, and it should not be unexpected for him to want the organization to which he represents the United States to have a broader role than those who do not have daily interaction with IAEA officials.