President George W. Bush issued an executive order Feb. 4 that called for relevant U.S. departments and agencies to take steps to implement an additional protocol to the U.S. safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The United States signed its additional protocol in 1998 but has yet to complete the process allowing its entry into force.
The 1997 Model Additional Protocol enhances the scope of IAEA safeguards to improve the IAEA’s ability to detect undeclared nuclear activities. The United States, as a nuclear-weapon state under the 1968 nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, is not required to adopt IAEA safeguards, but does so as a voluntary confidence-building measure.
The Feb. 4 executive order requires that the Departments of Commerce, Defense, Energy, Justice, and State; the Nuclear Regulatory Commission; and other appropriate agencies “issue, amend, or revise, and enforce such regulations, orders, directives, instructions, or procedures as are necessary” to implement the U.S. additional protocol.
In February 2004, Bush called on the Senate to ratify an additional protocol while calling on other countries to do the same. The Senate complied the following month by issuing its consent to ratification. As part of the ratifying legislation, the Senate required the president to certify that appropriate procedures to manage inspectors’ access to facilities are in place due to concerns that inspections may compromise information of “direct national security significance.” During their ratification consideration, some senators wanted to place additional restrictions on the inspection process, but these were rejected out of fear they would cause other countries to place similar restrictions.
The Senate passed the implementing legislation needed to direct U.S. agencies to carry out such procedures about two years later, in November 2006. The executive order fulfilled one of the requirements of this legislation, which called on the president to designate the agencies responsible for implementing the legislation and the protocol.
A former State Department official told Arms Control Today Feb. 15 that, in the interagency process of drafting the regulations for carrying out this legislation, the terms of implementation “grew more and more restrictive,” primarily at the urging of the Defense Department and the National Security Council. The former official explained that these restrictions related to the level and scope of access for inspections, as well as the personnel involved in the decision-making process regarding implementation.
The former official said that the primary concern on the part of the Defense Department related to the potential risk that the inspection process may compromise sensitive national security information. As a nuclear-weapon state, all U.S. defense-related facilities are exempt from safeguards. However, a number of military-related facilities are co-located with civilian facilities. These dual-use facilities were at the core the Defense Department’s concerns and desired restrictions.
The Commerce Department also expressed concerns regarding the cost of the implementation process in light of continual delays and uncertainty that the protocol would ever be concluded. The former State Department official explained that the Commerce Department was reluctant to spend scarce funds on vulnerability assessments and managed-access measures at a time that it was not yet clear that these activities would be needed.
Resolving the terms of these managed-access procedures continues to delay U.S. ratification of its additional protocol. Nonetheless, Washington has sought the widespread adoption of the Model Additional Protocol as an important nonproliferation goal. Susan Burke, then-acting assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee January 2004 that “a key nonproliferation goal of the United States has been to increase non-nuclear-weapon state adherence to the [Model] Additional Protocol.” She added, “Entry into force of the U.S.-IAEA additional protocol would provide a powerful tool in furthering this goal.”
Washington has placed particular emphasis on the need for Iran to implement its additional protocol in order to provide greater transparency regarding its nuclear activities.