ElBaradei supports US nuke security plan

The head of the UN nuclear watchdog, Mohamed ElBaradei, yesterday threw his weight behind a US proposal aimed at bolstering global nuclear security and cracking down on states that violate non-proliferation rules.

Mr ElBaradei, who won a third term as director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Monday after the US gave up its campaign to oust him, said the US plan to set up a new IAEA committee was useful.

Diplomats on the board said Mr ElBaradei had opposed the plan when it was first proposed by Washington earlier this year. The US proposal had undergone significant revisions since then to overcome IAEA objections, they said.

"The strengthening of the agency's safeguards system to deal effectively with evolving proliferation challenges should be an ongoing process," Mr ElBaradei said in the text of a speech to the IAEA's governing board, which is meeting this week.

"A new committee would usefully explore how the safeguards system could be further strengthened," he added.

Mr ElBaradei said he hoped the board of governors would agree on specifics of the plan during this week's meeting.

Some diplomats on the board said they suspected Mr ElBaradei's support for the proposal was the result of a deal reached during a sudden visit he made to Washington last week, aimed at winning US backing for his re-election.

Mr ElBaradei denied making any deal with the United States, saying his re-election did not come up when he met US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during his trip to Washington. "We did not discuss the past. We did not discuss my election," Mr ElBaradei told reporters on Monday.

The IAEA board is also expected to approve a request by Saudi Arabia to sign an agreement that would severely curtail the agency's ability to verify that Riyadh does not have any nuclear secrets, diplomats on the IAEA board said.

The "small quantities protocol" is an accord states which say they have little or no nuclear material can sign with the IAEA. The agency has said it is a dangerous loophole in the IAEA inspection regime because the UN body lacks the right to verify that states meet all non-proliferation requirements.

The US, Australia and the European Union have all asked Saudi Arabia to withdraw its request to sign the IAEA agreement but Riyadh refused, the diplomats said.

A Saudi Foreign Ministry official said on Sunday his country still wanted to sign the agreement and that the kingdom had no "nuclear installations, reactors, fissile or source materials".

Saudi Arabia confirmed its intention in a letter it sent to the IAEA board yesterday, in which it also denied what it said were erroneous media reports that it has a nuclear reactor that it will not let the IAEA inspect, diplomats on the board said.

"In his statement to the IAEA board, Mr ElBaradei said his agency had identified such protocols as "a weakness of the safeguards system" and he hoped the IAEA board would decide what to do with the protocol "at the earliest possible opportunity".

Mr ElBaradei yesterday also urged Iran to allow a team of experts to return to a military site called Parchin, which they inspected once but have since been barred from visiting.