The International Atomic Energy Agency: The World's Enforcer or Paper Tiger?

September 28, 2004

Unedited transcript prepared from a tape recording

Proceedings:
MR. MURAVCHIK:  This conference is about the different aspects of the U.N.  We are having, for this one, two sessions:  First a lecture and a question period for Undersecretary Bolton and then, following that, I'll ask the panelists to come forward and we'll have a panel discussion.

You have information in your kits about biographies.  John Bolton is the Undersecretary of State for Disarmament and Arms Control, is that what--close enough?  He was formerly Assistant Secretary for International Organizations and Assistant Attorney General.

More important than all of this high-level government service is his high-level service here as a Senior Vice President of AEI and, for those of us with had the pleasure of working with John while he was here, it's particularly fun to read in the newspapers these days that he's a leading neocon in the Bush Administration.  We never knew he was a neocon, all the time that he was here.  But he was a great colleague and officer of AEI.  And a great person to exchange ideas with.

And on the very serious subject matter that we're dealing with today, I can only tell you that each time I think of the tough and difficult people that we're having to deal with in Tehran and Pyongyang, I feel much better knowing that John Bolton is facing them on our behalf.

John, thanks very much for joining us today.

MR. BOLTON:  Thank you, Josh.  It's a pleasure to be back at AEI and even though Josh has blown my cover now as a neoconservative, it's still a pleasure to be back.

I wanted to try to cover some ground, both with respect to the IAEA and with respect to the U.S. Security Council in connection with nuclear proliferation matters, because I think that this is an increasingly important subject and the respective responsibilities of these organizations and how they fit into the large issue of proliferation is one that's not well understood.

And I think where you have to begin is with some concept of how the United Nations system, itself, works.  When I was in the first Bush Administration, responsible for U.N. system matters, we had a concept we called the Unitary  U.N., which was an analytical framework within which we tried to place the various components of the U.N.--the political bodies; the specialized and technical agencies; in ways that helped structure U.S. policy in the U.N. system to avoid duplication and overlap.  And to give a more coherent view of how one might affect the U.N., than simply looking at all of its pieces.

And I think that one of the conclusion st emerged from that analytical construct, was that there is, within the U.N. system--both among the member governments and among the respective secretariats--different ways of looking at the underlying charters of the various U.N. agencies.

In many respects, the United States itself over the course of many years, as a tension in the way it views U.N. agencies and the way they perform their business.  There is, I think it's fair to say, an enormous frustration on many occasions within the American body politic about the ineffectiveness and inefficiency of U.N. agencies.  Whereas, at the same time, there is concern that these agencies not exceed their mandates that they have responsibilities and duties that their underlying charters or statutes or enabling treaties give them.  And we want them to be confined to that.

And I would characterize this tension within the United States itself, as being mirrored in the respective agencies, where, in many cases, the secretariats and other member governments take the--for example, the IAEA statute and read it with great literalness, very carefully parsing the words; not being willing to go beyond them.  And that is the source, I think, of frequent American frustration.

On the other hand, if you think about the other extreme, where people reading these charters are incipient William O'Douglases, finding emanations and penumbras in words in these charters that most of us look at and simply seem the plain meaning of the words before us, we would be very gravely concerned.

There's a second line of thought that characterizes the longstanding American policy towards the specialized and technical agencies, in particular.  And that is a desire to avoid the politicization of the specialized agencies to prevent them, for instance, from becoming--as we just saw yet again in the IAEA General Conference--a forum for the discussion of the Arab/Israeli dispute, to try and keep the specialized and technical agencies from being simply forums where disputes that are more properly discussed in other agencies are carried out.

So, with that as a background, I think it's important to understand in the case of the IAEA, just exactly what it is and what it is not.  And to describe what the IAEA does, of course, we should turn to the IAEA statute and, specifically, Article 3, which is entitled "Functions." 

Now, this is where the parties--the members of the IAEA--have set out their agreement on what the purposes of the IAEA are.  So, before we get into that discussion about the way the IAEA is frequently referred to in journalistic circles as the "U.N.'s nuclear watchdog agency," sometimes I think on journalists' typewriters around the world, after they or their computers I guess they even--they don't use typewriters, but they type out the International Atomic Energy Agency and then they hit one key and it types ", the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog agency,."

Let's talk about what the IAEA statute, itself, says the functions are.  The first four functions that are listed have to do with the peaceful application of nuclear energy in the world.  I won't read all four of them.  You are perfectly free to read them yourselves.  But you'll see it doesn't have anything to do with being a nuclear watchdog.  It has to do with the peaceful uses of nuclear power.

The fifth purpose deals with safeguards; and I will come back to that in a minute.  The sixth function deals with nuclear safety issues; safety and health issues.  And the seventh function--I'm not quite sure why it's there but--it allows the IAEA to procure facilities when existing facilities in areas of concern to it are inadequate.

Now, the fifth function, as laid out in the statute, deals, first, with the ability of the IAEA to set out safeguards--and I'm going to quote now, "to ensure that special, fissionable, and other materials, services, equipment, facilities, and information made available by the agency or at its request or under its supervision or control are not used in such a way as to further any military purpose."

So, the first half of this fifth function deals with services or facilities made available by the IAEA itself to ensure that they're not used for military purposes.

Then the second half of the fifth function--second half of the fifth function says, "To apply safeguards at the request of the parties to any bilateral or multilateral arrangement or at the request of a state to any of that state's activities in the field of atomic energy." 

So, specifically, what the IAEA is to do in this area is to apply safeguards agreements.  Now, the most important safeguards agreement that the IAEA applies is the nuclear--the provisions in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty which talk about the functions in the safeguards area as being carefully defined in the NPT.

And I'm quoting now from the NPT, "With a view to preventing diversion of nuclear energy from peaceful uses to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices."  And if you look at the safeguards agreements, themselves, that the IAEA signs with its member states, it's very carefully devised to allow the IAEA to ensure that special fissionable material--uranium and plutonium--are not taken out of safeguarded facilities; whether they are reactors or other aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle; they're not taken out of those safeguarded facilities and put to some other use.

That's what the IAEA does, principally, in the area of nuclear proliferation--it enforces and monitors safeguards agreements.

Now, that's an important function.  It's a useful function.  It is not the same thing as being the agency that enforces compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.  And, in fact, there is considerable debate about the IAEA safeguards activities.  I remember when I was in the first Bush Administration, hearing from Hans Blix and others that the thought that it was time to change the direction of the IAEA safeguards budget because, in the late 1980s and early 1990s the IAEA safeguards budget was spent 80 percent--80 percent monitoring safeguards compliance in three countries:  Canada, Japan, and Germany.

Now, let me say this again, 15 years ago, 80 percent of the agency's safeguards budget was spent monitoring the compliance with safeguards agreements in three countries:  Canada, Japan, and Germany, which he--and we--at the time, fully agreed were not exactly the most urgent sources of concern for the proliferation of nuclear weapons.  Maybe some of you have doubts about Canada.  I have no doubts--I have no doubts about Japan or Germany, either.

Now, today, the situation has been improved.  And my understanding is that a mere 60 percent of the IAEA safeguards budget is spent monitoring compliance with the safeguards agreement of Canada, Japan, and Germany.

But let me say, even if you think that we need to be paying more attention to those three countries or paying less, what the safeguards budget does is monitor compliance with safeguards--safeguard agreements which rely on the declaration of facilities and making it available to IAEA personnel.

Now, the IAEA does, in fact, try to do a little bit more than that.  But, let's be very clear:  What the IAEA principally does--and what it's very good at--is monitoring safeguards agreements.  If a facility is not declared--if a facility is not known to the IAEA, even under the new additional protocol, if it has no reason to believe that a facility should be declared and under safeguards, it's ability to detect and analyze activity at various facilities is limited, to say the least.

Now, with that understanding of what the IAEA can do, I think we can turn to its recent activities in the case of two countries that I think are important to look at:  One being North Korea; the other being Iran. 

And in the case of North Korea, in light of the recent difficulties with the North Koreans' flat violation over a sustained period of time of the 1994-agreed framework, North Korean violations that began, as best we can tell, almost from the time the ink was drying on the 1994 agreed framework and involving their effort to achieve a nuclear-weapons capability through an enriched uranium route, rather than through a plutonium reprocessing route.

The IAEA Board of Governors, following the mandates in the IAEA statute, referred North Korea to the U.N. Security Council.  Now, activity in the Security Council has been withheld while the United States and others pursue the six-party talks that I'm sure most of you are familiar with.

But in the case of Korea, and then the subsequent case of Libya--which renounced the pursuit of weapons of mass destruction in December of last year--the IAEA Board of Governors referred the two cases to the Security Council for its consideration.

Now, the case of Iran in the IAEA has not yet resulted in a referral to the Security Council.  Despite the fact that we have now had the Iranian nuclear program, under consideration in the Board of governors for six meetings, extending over a period of 18 months, the Board has not yet come to the conclusion that Iran should be referred to the Security Council.

Now, there are a variety of reasons that one could go into about this involving perceptions about what Iran is up to; involving disagreements in tactics about how best to handle the Iranian nuclear program.  But I would like to focus on the institutional question of what it is that the IAEA is supposed to do and what, exactly, that means for the functioning of the agency.

There are three possible reasons why the IAEA--three possible grounds on which the IAEA can refer to the Security Council.

The first, under the IAEA statute, is in Article 12 of the IAEA statute dealing with compliance with safeguards agreements.  And what it says is, the board--I'm quoting now from Article 12(c) of the statute, "The Board shall report the noncompliance to all members and to the Security Council and General Assembly of the United Nations." 

Now, this is a question of the finding by the Board of noncompliance with the safeguards agreement.  And, as I previously stated, that is a narrow and technical question of whether there is evidence of violation of the safeguards agreement, which the IAEA is monitoring.

There's an alternative ground to refer to the Security Council.  And that is--and I'm now quoting from Article 19 of the traditional safeguards Agreement, as follows:  "If the Board, upon examination of relevant information reported to it by the Director Genera, finds that the agency is not able to verify that there has been no diversion of nuclear material required to be safeguarded under this agreement" in other words, it, again, comes back to the safeguards agreement and a finding by the agency that it can't verify that there's been no diversion.  Now, I'll leave you to think about what, exactly, that means for a few minutes.  But it is, in any event, tied directly and specifically to the safeguards agreement.

Now, there is a third ground on which referral can be made to the Security Council that is my understanding, at least, has never been used.  And that is in Article 3 of the IAEA statute, which says, and I quote, "If, in connection with the activities of the agency, there should arise questions that are within the competence of the Security Council, the agency shall notify the Security Council as the organ bearing the main responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security," and so on.  That is to say, if there is--now this is the one ground not based on safeguards agreements. 

In other words, this is simply saying, should there arise questions that are within the competence of the Security Council, whose area of responsibility is the maintenance of international peace and security, the Board shall notify the Security Council, mandatorily shall notify. 

Now, this is the essence of what our position has been this past 18 months.  At a minimum, we say there are questions that have arisen about what Iran's nuclear program is about.  Quite apart from the fact that it has violated its safeguards agreements, repeatedly, as the Board found in November. 

Quite apart from the fact that there are any number of instances where Iran has quite clearly delayed and obstructed IAEA inspectors and covered up evidence of its past activity, which, in itself, is strong evidence of the safeguards violation.

There's no doubt that there are legitimate questions about what Iran is up to.  I might note there are stories out of Vienna today, I noticed just before coming over here--I don't have any information--other than what I read from presumably reputable journalistic sources--that say that the IAEA has not found any evidence of nuclear contamination at the Lavizan site.  This is a site that the IAEA asked to visit in Iran to see if there was any activity. 

Our information was that the Iranians had leveled the facility at Lavizan and stripped away two meters' worth of dirt underneath the facility.  So, it's probably not surprising the IAEA hasn't found anything. 

There was also a case where Iran didn't quite find it convenient enough to allow the IAEA inspectors in until its earth movers had removed that very inconvenient two meters of dirt.

Now, this goes to a fairly fundamental question here:  Whether the IAEA's Board recognizes that it is not the responsible agency for the conduct of the affairs involving international peace and security.  But that the Security Council is.  That's what we think and that's why we've been pressing for it.  That's why we're going to continue to press for it in November.

Now, some would say, oh, but my goodness, if you refer Iran to the Security Council, what a terrible thing that will be, because--because what?  Because what happens in the Security Council?

Well, immediate sanctions?  I don't think so.  Immediate authorization to use force?  I don't think so.  It is simply not the case that referral to the Security Council, as is completely contemplated by the IAEA statute, results in any kind of automatic Security Council action.

The reason we favor taking it to the Security Council is we want to put Iran in the international spotlight in the agency and the U.N. system responsible for such matters; to change the global political dynamic, to increase the pressure on Iran to give up the pursuit of nuclear weapons.

But the idea that somehow, just getting on the agenda of the Security Council is the equivalent to a form of punishment is, really, quite outlandish.  This, we're talking about discussions in the Security Council chamber.  Not the Star chamber.  We don't have whips and chains around the side of it.  We don't have permanent representatives stretched out on racks.  We don't have thumbscrews for foreign ministers.  We're talking about the Security council.

Now, it may be that some people think that the Security Council responds to anything that the  United States asks for.  That is not true.  They closest, I think, we ever came to that is--I remember a cartoon from the time of the first Persian Gulf War when Secretary Baker was handling our diplomacy there, and there was a picture of--the cartoon is a picture of the U.N. Secretariat building, that big wall of glass. 

And, you know, how office buildings for sometime, the windows are sometimes lit up with messages, you know, Merry Xmas or something like that.  And in this cartoon that the big U.N. building was lit up with the message that said, "Kick butt."  And the caption was two figures at the bottom speaking to each other.  The caption was one saying to the other, "Is there no limit to what James Baker can make the U.N. do?"

I don't know the answer to that question, but it's been a long time since anybody's drawn a cartoon like that.

The fact of the matter is that moving the Iran question to the Security Council is or ought to be a matter of smooth functioning of the U.N. system.  When the IAEA sees matters within the competence of the Security Council, it should refer the issue to the Security Council, as it did in the case of Korea.

Now, there are a lot of questions that this whole inability to get the issue to the Security Council raises.  The United States was not successful in getting the so-called second resolution on Iraq.  It doesn't trouble me from the perspective of so-called international legality that we didn't because I think we were fully justified under 1441.  In fact, I would have said we were justified under 678 and 687.  There's a whole series of reasons why that resolution wasn't necessary.

But the fact was that 1441 was hard to get and the second resolution was not obtained.  The Security Council is not acting on North Korea, for reasons that I've described before, that are sufficient, at least, under the present time.  But it's not been able to act on Iran, because we haven't been able to get the issue of Iran to the Security Council.

And one would have to say that there's a question out there that we all need to think about, if the Council can act on threats of nuclear proliferation which, certainly, in confluence with the risk that terrorists are going to get these weapons, does constitute, I think, the principal threat to international security before us today.  Are we looking at another situation analogous to the Cold War, where the Security Council is gridlocked?

And the answer to that question remains to be seen.  It's certainly our hope that it's not gridlocked, but the issue is out there.  Which is one reason that the United States is not simply following the diplomatic route through the IAEA Board of Governors and the Security Council.  But why, over the past year and a half, we've undertaken a number of other steps to deal with threats of proliferation from weapons of mass destruction, generally.

And the one that I would like to just touch on for a moment here is the Proliferation Security Initiative, which is, like the IAEA and the Security Council, a multilateral effort.  Note that our policy with respect to Iran and North Korea is resolutely multilateral, all across the board.

The Proliferation Security Initiative is a multilateral effort.  But we'd like to say about PSI it's an activity, not an organization.  And, like most mantras, the more you say it, the deeper it's meaning gets.  It's an activity, not an organization.  It doesn't have a secretariat; it doesn't have a headquarters building; it doesn't rely on mass meetings of diplomats. 

To be effective, it should be as operational as it can be, involving exchanges of information among intelligence agencies; law-enforcement agencies; cooperation among military assets of the countries involved; and, aimed principally at interdicting the shipment of weapons of mass destruction and WMD-related materials in international commerce; as well as new aspects that we've added pursuant to President Bush's direction going after manufacturing facilities and laboratories and financial flows in aid of WMD procurement, as well.

As an activity, not an organization, PSI is flexible and robust.  It's had one major success already that we can discuss publicly.  Others that we can't discuss publicly.  But the one we can, of course, is the interdiction of the ship, the BBC China, which was bearing a cargo of uranium centrifuge equipment, ultimately destined for Libya.

The seizure of that ship and the equipment on it, we think, had a major, perhaps dispositive role in Libya's decision to give up the pursuit of weapons of mass destruction last year.  And we think that the seizure and the subsequent attention given to it was a major factor in the disruption of the A.Q. Khan [ph] network and I think will have a deterrent and dissuasive effect on a number of states that are considering or involved in proliferation matters.

In short, there are alternatives that are out there that are fully multilateral; that involve close cooperation among many nations, not undertaken unilaterally by the United States, that could have and should have and will have a dramatic effect on proliferation.

So, I would have to say, harking back to my AEI days as a market-oriented philosopher, that competition among, not just organizations, but competition among activities and organizations in the international sphere has its benefits.  And that this is one way to cooperate to achieve our nonproliferation goals even if we're not able to achieve them at the rate or the speed that we'd like in some of the more traditional organizations.

I'll stop there, I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have.

[Applause.]

I'll take the questions.  It's tradition here that you wait for the microphone, assuming that we have microphones and that you identify yourselves, please with your name and organization for the historical record that we're creating here today.  Yes, sir?

MR. HORNER:  Thanks, Dan Horner, from McGraw-Hill Nuclear Publications.  You made a clear point about why countries should not oppose going--referring the Iran question to the Security Council, per se.  But I wonder if you could say a little bit more about what you hope to gain by that.  That is, what actions are you contemplating there or would it be within the Security Council--would you look to the Security Council to refer the issue back to the Board of Governors with some sort of strengthened mandate or what exactly is it that you would hope to get out of the referral to the Security Council?

MR. BOLTON:  Well, I think the first thing we would get out of referral to the Security Council is a change in the global political calculus of the importance, the saliency of the Iranian program.  And I think changing that calculus should, hopefully will, change the cause-benefit analysis that's going on in Tehran.

I think, at a minimum, having the five permanent members of the Council address the Iran question in their capacity as permanent members, will be significant.

I think one of the concerns that we've had with Russia is that their involvement in the Iranian nuclear program, the construction of the Bushehr reactor and the supply of fuel for that reactor, puts them in the position of a supplier to Iran.  And they are concerned that if they were to withdraw from Bushehr, they would simply be replaced by some other commercial entity from another country. 

I can understand that commercial concern, but that's not the approach that we would like them to have.  And I think seeing the issue in their capacity as one of the five permanent members in the Security Council would have an effect on the way they view it.

But I think, also, it raises the stakes for Iran.  And let's be very clear about this.  The question of the future of the Iranian program is fundamentally in their hands.  They have chosen to proceed with it, rejecting the Libya example. 

I think, in the Security Council their options narrow.  And I think that's appropriate because one does have to look at what authorities the Security Council has and  when they may be exercised.  And I think the best way to tee-up an outcome where Iran does not emerge with a nuclear capability is to follow that route.  No guarantees, but that's our scenario. 

PARTICIPANT:  First I want to applaud your efforts to take this matter to the U.N. Security Council.  I believe you're showing and the State Department's leadership in that regard. 

Yesterday, key officials there who are North Korean, stated for the record that they have nuclear weapons.  Curious if you could highlight what it would take and when you would think it would be appropriate to push harder on the referral matter so that, perhaps, the light between the cases of Iran and North Korea might be closed?

MR. BOLTON:  Yeah, I think that's a legitimate question and I think the answer to it depends on the likelihood of success in the six-party talks, where we've had three rounds and where we were prepared and we thought others were prepared to have a fourth round before the end of September.

That, obviously, isn't going to happen and I think it's clear that the North Koreans took a look at the calendar and decided it was not in their interest to have a fourth round before our election.

We're ready for a fourth round; we're prepared for it.  It's too bad the North Koreans have decided to see the outcome of the election.  I hope they don't think they're going to do anything in October where they think they might affect the outcome of the election in addition to just waiting for it to be other.  But the--certainly, it would be our intention to resume the talks after the election.

What we expect from the North Koreans is a serious answer to what we put on the table at the third round.  And I think at some point you have to ask the question, if the North Koreans are not willing to engage seriously, what the future of the talks is.  Condi Rice was asked the question sometime ago:  How long are you going to proceed with the six-party talks?  And she said, as long as they're productive.  I don't know what that means in calendar terms, but I think it would be fair to say that if, at some point, North Korea continued to stonewall, then I think the Security Council is the next logical step.

PARTICIPANT:  You talked about the IAEA charter and, yes, it is very important to have a clear set of rules, but at the same time, the other side of the same coin, I think, is the fair implementation or fair enforcement of those rules.  And it appears to me that there are some people who have raised doubts about the fair implementations, enforcement of rules, international rules and this I am afraid to say, includes U.N. Secretary General.  Your response?

MR. BOLTON:  I'm probably not going to respond to that, but if you're--could you be a little more specific about what you're referring to?  Well, I think the President answered his speech and I don't have--I don't have--I don't think I can gild that lily any, so I think I'll take a pass on that.  Yes, sir?

MR. HUDSON:  Thank you, Sol Hudson, from Reuters.  Just to follow-up on what you were saying about North Korea and the talks.  You were saying, obviously, that they're the ones who don't want talks before the U.S. election.  But what if their October surprise was to be to invite you to talk to say, yes, we will have a round of talks before the election, i.e., in October?  Is that something the U.S. should get involved in, given what you're saying about the lack of interest into it before the election because it might be useless or it might even just be counterproductive giving them a platform to grandstand. 

Would the U.S. say, yes, if they wanted talks in October?

MR. BOLTON:  Well, in fact, the North Koreans have said the precise opposite, that they basically I think, yesterday, in New York said that they weren't interested in anything before the election.  And they've said in a more indirect way that they will not engage in another round of the six-party talks until the South Korean question is resolved. 

And I think the schedule that we're following there on South Korea, on the undisclosed uranium enrichment and other experiments is that we will expect a report from the IAEA Director General, just before the November Board of Governors meeting, which conveniently, for North Korea, doesn't begin until November 25, after our election.  So they have posed a condition that means essentially that it's not possible to have the talks before the election.

But, you know, the parties agreed on having talks before the end of September, it's now September 28, if they want to propose something else, I suppose the other parties could take a look at it, but it would be yet another--I hate to use the word flip-flop, but, yet, another change in the North Korean position, which doesn't have a lot of credibility behind it to begin with.  Yes, sir?

MR. WALKER:  Thank you, Martin Walker, United Press International.  I seem to hear, just under the surface of what you were saying about the complexities of the IAEA charter and statutes a degree of dissastifaction with the muscular ability of the IAEA to really control proliferation.

Do you think that the statutes ought to be tightened?  And do you think they could be tightened?  And, if so, what sort of regime would you like to see?

MR. BOLTON:  Well, I didn't really mean to express dissatisfaction.  What I was trying to convey was this tension that we feel, particularly, as Americans behind the, I think the proper way of looking at the IAEA statute and the underlying charters of U.N. agencies that we reach agreement on what these things say and, frankly, from our point of view, frustrating, though it is, that's what they ought to follow.

This is called literalism when it's applied constitutional interpretation.  And I think it's been a fairly consistent view of ours in the international organization arena, as well.

But what that says, what that suggests is when you have an agency like the IAEA, a technical agency, not--actually not a specialized agency of the U.N., but an autonomous organization under the U.N. Umbrella that has fairly clearly-defined roles, that when you get to larger political questions, such as the nature of the Iranian program, it is most appropriate, both for the IAEA and for the Security Council, to have the main decision-making forum within the U.N. system, be the Security Council.

So, I would say the frustration is not with the IAEA, the frustration is that after six meetings of the IAEA Board, the issue is still in Vienna. 

Now, I don't think after November, it's still going to be in November, I think it's going to move to the Security Council and that's where it belongs.

MR. SCHWEID:  On North Korea, if it were the issue to get--Barry Schweid, Associated Press. If the North Korean program gets to the Security Council, what would you like to see happen there?  And, it doesn't sound like the Administration has given up on the six-party talks.  Presumably, you think the South Korean thing could be handled in an effective way and undercut North Korea's stalling?

MR. BOLTON:  Yes.

MR. SCHWEID:  But, am I correct that you see them coming back to the table at some point?

MR. BOLTON:  Well, I can't characterize what the North Koreans are going to do, but we're certainly prepared to continue with the six-party talks, absolutely.  This business about South Korea has simply been used by the North Koreans as a propaganda ploy.  We have said, repeatedly, that we will handle the South Korean issue consistently with the way we've handled other examples of this sort.  We're not going to show any double standard.  But it's just.  It's a propaganda ploy by the North Koreans to equate what we think are a couple or three isolated instances in South Korea with a determined march toward nuclear weapons that the North Koreans have been pursuing.

So, absolutely, we help start the six-party talks.  We've been deeply committed to it and we remain so.  It's the North Koreans that have not been serious about this.

[OFF MICROPHONE UNINTELLIGIBLE]

There were--if you look at the report of the Director General in September, it's three separate things that he referred to.  And I think all those will be covered in more detail in the written report that he will submit, presumably, by mid-November.

PARTICIPANT:  Regarding, Iran, obviously, time is of the essence.  I'd like to know, since it looks like we wasted, already, 18 months.  What are the options open to the U.S. government if the IAEA doesn't take it to the Security Council?

MR. BOLTON:  Well, I think the President addressed that in an interview that was broadcast last night.  And, once again, I'm not going to go beyond that.  But what he said was, we've said we are working our hearts out--I can testify to the truth of that--working our hearts out to try and find a diplomatic resolution to this.  But he also said that we don't take options off the table.  And that we are determined that Iran not possess nuclear weapons.  And that is the fundamental point of policy.

MR. NELSON:  Chris Nelson, with The Nelson Report.  If you talk quietly to people who do nonproliferation for a living, in the last few months you get an increasing sense that--for the reasons you've been describing today--gaps in the statutes or willingness to enforce them or any number of the complications that we're all aware of--that we may not be able to really stop either Iran or North Korea.  And I just mention that--now we have, at the U.N., yesterday, more or less a definitive statement from "a" North Korean official that seems to say we have these weapons. 

Is that your information?  Do we really think they have these weapons?  Doesn't that radically alter the dynamic of how to deal with them and whether we have to find some way to live with that?

MR. BOLTON:  Well, I'm not going to go beyond what other people in the Administration have said about what we think the weapons status in North Korea is, except, I would point out one significant historical fact:  When people have talked about the estimate of one to two plutonium-base nuclear weapons in North Korea and say, as some have, you know, that there were one to two a couple of years ago in 2000 and 2001; now there may be as many as six or eight.  What an increase that represents.

That estimate of one to two weapons, goes back to the period before the agreed framework, '91, '92, when that estimate, I think, was first made.  So, it's very hard to know exactly what the status of North Korea's nuclear weapons arsenal is.  And, as I say, I don't really want to go beyond the specifics. 

But I think that the--one of the principal purposes of the Proliferation Security Initiative is to prevent governments like North Korea or Iran from being able to take advantage of access to more sophisticated technology and materials that if they might be able to obtain externally at a lower cost or lower level of hassling than if they had to do it internally. 

And I don't think it's a static measurement to say, well, they've got it or now they don't have it, in terms of nuclear weapons capability.  I think it's an ongoing struggle.  And I think, to move beyond Iran and North Korea for a minute.  It's one of the reasons why President Bush, in his February speech at the National Defense University, stressed the need to plug loopholes in a nonproliferation regime.

The fundamental problem that we have in many countries--and Iran is, really, the best example of it--is that you could be technically in compliance with your safeguards agreement; you could move right up to the edge of a break-out capacity under the current system and then renounce the NPT and you'd be home free.

Now, I don't think that's what Iran was doing.  I think they had a clandestine program, as well as a declared program and they were moving through both at once.  But the idea that we can allow Iran, given its intent, given its support for terrorism, to have a so-called peaceful nuclear program and not be concerned about its potential to a weaponization program, I think would be a big mistake.

If I would stress anything from three years in this job, it's that the risk of proliferation is not how many cascades of centrifuges you have or whether you have a uranium mine or your own conversion facility. 

It's the intellectual property that rogue states have that allows them to develop the nuclear weapons infrastructure that they need.  And I think that's what can happen, even under a system of complete safeguards.  I think that's what the Iranians would have liked to have tried to have done if we and others hadn't prematurely disclosed their plans for them.

And that's a reason why saying that, well, what would be the problem with Iran or North Korea having a uranium-enrichment program where they simply said, we will only enrich up to reactor-grade uranium.  And we'll promise we won't go beyond that when exactly the same equipment and exactly the same technology takes you from reactor-grade to weapons-grade very quickly. 

In fact, a little footnote on physics if I can get this correctly.  The incidence of U2-35 isotopes in natural uranium is about 0.7 percent.  Reactor-grade uranium for fuel is enriched to about 4.5 percent, it varies a little bit, but 4.5 percent's not a bad number.  Weapons-grade uranium has a U2-35 concentration of 90 percent or more.

Now, to get from 0.7 percent to 4.5 percent to over 90 percent requires a lot of energy, spinning those centrifuges and separating the U2-35 isotopes from U2-38.  The total amount of energy to go from 0.7 percent concentration to over 90 percent concentration breaks out as follows:  It takes 69 percent of that total energy--69 percent, to go from 0.7 percent concentration of U2-35 isotopes to 4.5 percent.  It only takes 21 percent of the energy to go from 4.5 percent to over 90 percent.

So, in other words, once you've enriched from the natural concentration of US-35 to reactor-grade fuel, you've consumed 69 percent of the total energy you're going to need.  You only need another 21 percent to get it to weapons grade.  So, you're that close to it at that point, at least in terms of energy consumption.

Now, what that shows is that only enriching to 4.5 percent has gotten you 3 and 1/2 times closer to weapons-grade than the last step that you're going to have to take.  That's why a pledge--a country that's willing to violate its NTP obligations is surely willing to violate a pledge that it will only enrich to reactor-grade. 

And if my physics are wrong, someone could correct me.  I'm a lawyer, after all, the lady over here?

MS. CARR:  Hi, Hanna Carr [ph], with CNN.  Can you just go into a little bit of detail about how far along do you believe--how far along do you think the Irani nuclear weapons program actually is and how concerned the U.S. should be about it?

MR. BOLTON:  Well, we think the program is quite advanced and quite sophisticated and is moving very quickly.  There are a lot of unanswered questions about this program that we think are compelling evidence of the fact that it's related to the nuclear weapons.  Estimates of when the Iranians will have an actual weapons capability varies.  The Iranians, themselves, have indicated it could be quite close.  But there are a range of questions that they've not answered.

I'll just give you one example that's cited in a recent IAEA report that Iran has produced polonium-210.  The IAEA report, itself, says there are only two known uses for polonium-210; one is to be a source of energy in short-term earth satellites, of which Iran has none; or as an initiator--a neutron initiator in nuclear reaction.

So, you ask the Iranians why are you experimenting with polonium-210 and there isn't any answer.  That's the sort of thing that not only is, we think, evidence of the nuclear weapons intent, but evidence of getting close enough that they're worried about how to initiate and boost the nuclear reaction.

That's why the estimates, although they vary about when Iran will have a weapons capability, I think it's important not to get hung up in those estimates, they are moving on it as quickly as they can.  Our estimates may be too close on one side, too far on the other.  If we're wrong, and we certainly can be, because intelligence is an uncertain business--the risk is that our intelligence may be wrong in the same way our intelligence was wrong before the first Persian Gulf War when we dramatically underestimated what Saddam Hussein's nuclear capability was at that point.

Josh, maybe I'll take one more question, is that okay?  Let me go back to this fellow who's been waiting.

MR. BENDER:  Thanks, Brian Bender [ph], with the Boston Globe.  I think someone touched on this, but I'm interested in your personal view of how--

MR. BOLTON:  I can see this question's going to be trouble already.

MR. BENDER:  --how Israel, Pakistan, and India's nuclear programs, which are, obviously, outside of the NPT regime--how that factors into Iran's apparent desire for a nuclear weapon.

MR. BOLTON:  Well, you know, certainly, it is a convenient excuse that there are other countries in the geographic region that have nuclear programs.

Here's a fact for you, though, for all of those of you who are devotees of international treaties and compliance with multilateral obligations, Iran has joined the Nonproliferation Treaty as a nonweapons state.  Now, if it's got a concern with its security because of Pakistan or some other country, and it wants to say so, and it wants to pursue nuclear weapons legitimately, then it can withdraw from the Nonproliferation Treaty.

But for those of us who think that compliance with treaty obligations is an important thing, that is a reason in and of itself to say that Iran's activity is illegitimate.  Pakistan, India, and Israel are not parties to the Nonproliferation Treaty.  And you can like or dislike what they've done, but they certainly haven't violated any treaty obligations in getting to the capabilities they have.

Thank you very much, appreciate your comments.

MR. MARGOLIS:  John, it's characteristically gracious of you to take so many questions.  It's always wonderful to have you back here and thanks very much.

[Pause]

I'd like to ask our panelists, Mark Groombridge and Gary Milhoullin and Joe Cirincione to come up to the front please.

I believe that everyone got a packet when you registered.  If you didn't, you might want to grab one from the registration desk.  And the packets have within them, bio-sheets on all the speakers and, generally, our style is that then I won't read the bio-sheets to you on the assumption that everyone who attends these events is at least as good a reader as I am.

So, if I can ask everyone to sit down.  Anyone who's in the back, we've got some space in the front now, if you'd like to come up front.

We have a very outstanding panel.  I'm grateful to each of these three gentlemen for agreeing to participate.  I've asked them just, so we can keep a spirit of relaxedness to speak at the front and Joe, are you willing to start off?

MR. CIRINCIONE:  I'm happy to.

MR. MURAVCHIK:  Our first speaker will be Joe Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.  As I said, you have other information about him in your packet.  Joe?

MR. CIRINCIONE:  Thank you very much, Josh, I appreciate the invitation to speak here, it's a pleasure.  I very much enjoyed listening to the undersecretary's remarks.  You will notice that there's no material for me in your packet, there is a flier out there on the desk on your way out about our new report from Carnegie and I brought a few copies here.  These are free, take one if you'd like it, download it if you want.  It addresses some of the issues that we're going to be discussing today.

I think it's much more useful to have a discussion about all this.  I know there's a lot of expertise in this audience, so I'm going to keep my remarks brief.

I'm going to say something I very rarely say, I really agree with most of the remarks Undersecretary John Bolton made today, particularly, his very useful framing of the issue to remind us all of what the functions of the IAEA really are.  And this is not, really, an enforcement agency.  And, in fact, it's primary purpose isn't really safeguards.  From birth, this was a schizophrenic agency; from birth in the Republican Administration of President Eisenhower.  This was an agency that was dedicated to the promotion of the peaceful use of nuclear power and nuclear energy.  And it was designed to help make the world safe for nuclear energy.

And so, when you read its documents; when you look, for example, at their recent statement at the meeting in Vienna, the statement of the Director General Mohammad El Baradei, you know, you really have to get through the first 17 pages, before you see a discussion of the issues that we're here to discuss.

It all begins with their discussion of how they're promoting the peaceful uses of nuclear power; how they're promoting nuclear safety in the operation of peaceful uses of nuclear energy; and then, and only then, do they get to these issues of safeguards and the problem states that we're running into.

That's one thing to keep in mind.  If we didn't have the IAEA, we would have serious problems with the nuclear power industry.  The nuclear power industry, as a business, depends on their being an IAEA, it's good for the nuclear business, to have the IAEA in existence.

The invitation to this program, I've put a few programs on myself, so I'm used to the technique of being provocative to get an audience here.  We have that provocative statement that the Iraq nuclear program took place and grew under the noses of the IAEA.  That's a provocative statement, it is, certainly, a true statement.

It is also true to say that Iraq's nuclear program began under the noses of the Reagan and Bush Administration.  You know, this is when this program took off. This was in the 1970s, 1980s that it really--it was a clandestine program, after Israel struck the Osirak reactor in 1981, that's when the nuclear program really began in full force.

Then, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney and then special envoy Donald Rumsfeld had a close personal working relationship with Saddam Hussein.  You could say that this took place under their noses.  You could say that, that would be provocative.  I do not say that.  [Laughter]

It's not useful, it doesn't help you understand the problem.  And, in fact, this issue that programs were underway despite the inspection regime, despite the safeguards regime, is now widely recognized.  Everybody acknowledges it and that's why the IAEA took steps to improve the inspection regime.  And here's a good place to frame the issue one more time.

The IAEA is not an autonomous group of international bureaucrats, it is a 35-member board.  The inspectors operate at the pleasure of the Board members.  It is the Board that determines what to do.  It is those 35 nations.  And on that Board the United States has a great deal of influence and is often the leading nation on that 35-member Board.

So, this is a tool of the nations of the world.  It is a tool for the United States to use to accomplish its international security objectives.

And so, when we discovered that the Iraq program was taking place under all our noses, we did something about it.  We improved the tool.  We decided to pass the additional protocol.  And that additional protocol is working.  It is what is allowing us to uncover the Iranian program.

The inspections that have been taking place in Iran over the last two years have given us much more information about the clandestine Iranian program than we ever knew before.  More information than the CIA knew; more information than the Israeli Secret Service knew; more information than anybody knew.  This is an extremely valuable intelligence tool.

If the lesson of the '91 war was that the inspection tools, the IAEA tools weren't working well enough.  It's the lesson that the most recent Iraq war is that the inspections were working.  And this is also an important lesson to learn, in the run up to the recent war with Iraq, the IAEA intelligence was better than the U.S. intelligence.

The IAEA got it right.  They understood that there was not a nuclear program in Iraq.  With the U.S., up until, well, the day of the war,  months after the war, insisted that there was a program, it was completely wrong.  Our intelligence was wrong.

So, if you're looking to further U.S. national security, if you're looking to get the best intelligence possible, you have to use all the tools at your disposal.  The IAEA is one of those tools.

There are difficulties conducting the inspections in Iran, the undersecretary is absolutely right, Iran has been stonewalling.  In many instances has not come clean.  And for that reason it goes to the Vienna meetings and the 35-nation Board finds unanimously that Iran is not cooperating.

But, still, even despite the lack of their full coordination, we are learning an enormous amount about this program and uncovering it and starting to lay it bare.

Why can't we take it from Vienna to New York?  Why can't we go from the findings in these investigations straight to the U.N. Security Council?  I contend this is not an institutional problem.  This is a political problem.

The United States has a severe problem with the credibility of this Administration and the trust that other nations are willing to give this Administration.  Because of the false claims about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program that did not exist, there is a serious credibility problem about the claims we are now making.

Because of the way we hijacked the U.N. security process to wage a war in Iraq, nations and including our close allies are concerned that we will hijack this process to lead a war against Iran after the November election. 

We have a credibility problem, we have a trust problem.  This is not a problem with the institutional framework of the IAEA.  This is a political problem that's taking place among the 35-member Board, there.  This is a problem that we have to solve if we are going to arrive at a solution to Iran.

I agree very strongly with many of the statements that the undersecretary just made.  Were we somewhat differ, I believe, is that I don't believe the undersecretary has a solution to the Iran problem or the North Korea problem.  What exactly is the Administration proposing to do about it?

In the last four years both the Iranian and the North Korean programs have made giant steps forward while this Administration has stood back and done little or nothing about it.  That is the real problem we have and it has nothing to do with the effectiveness of the IAEA.  I'll leave it at that.

MR. MURAVCHIK:  Thank you very much Joe.  What do you think about the war in Iraq?

MR. CIRINCIONE:  It was an unnecessary war, based on deeply flawed and manipulated intelligence.

MR. MURAVCHIK:  It was more of a rhetorical question, but fair enough of you to seize it to give an answer.

Gary, may I call on you next?

MR. MILHOLLIN:  Sure.  Thank you.  I'm very pleased to be able to talk about the IAEA.  As those of you know who followed my, I guess I could call it a career--I've been at this for a long time--in this area, I've been quite critical of the Agency over the years. 

Before I--I thought I'd talk a little bit about the history and then make some points and leave it at that.  But since I'm here and since I've had my coffee.  I would like to make a commercial announcement.  Right here among us is Vallery Lindsey, who's sitting right over there.  She is the editor of Iran Watch our new Web site on Iran's WMB program, which already has 8,000 pages and a beautiful home page.  Which is in your folder.  Vallery designed this, she conceived it and she's populating it.  I just happen to remember the Website, it's called iranwatch.org.  If you didn't get that, I'll repeat it--iranwatch.org.  It's a sequel to our iraqwatch.org, which was quite successful and, well, did not cause the war.

The history of the IAEA is an important and interesting subject which I worked very hard to lay out some years ago.  So you now hear the second commercial announcement.  I did so in the New Yorker magazine in February of 1993.  And I'm going to repeat a few of the things I said then, here.  Since maybe you haven't all memorized that article.

You can find it on our institutional Website, that is wisconsinproject.org.  And you can find it and if you look in February of 1993.

What did I say about the IAEA back in 1993?  Well, I guess I pointed out something that Joe said and that is that the IAEA really is a historical relic in a sense.  That is it was invented under Atoms for Peace, at the same time as our old Atomic Energy Commission. 

We divided up the old Atomic Energy Commission into the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and DOE because, we, the United States, perceived that the public wouldn't accept the idea that the same entity was in charge of both promoting nuclear energy and regulating it. 

That, unfortunately, however has not happened to the IAEA.  And so the IAEA is still in charge of both promoting and regulating nuclear energy.  In fact, it's, hmm, it's an international entity whose official mission is proliferation.

And so, that puts it in a strange position.  Because if its inspectors find that nuclear energy is leading to the bomb somewhere and wasn't supposed to.  That it was exported under the assumption that it would be peaceful, then it turns out that it might not be such a good idea to proliferate this stuff, which means that the agency's other function shouldn't be carried out.

This inspectors really have an incentive not to find things from an institutional point of view.  That's important.  And I think that attitude was primary in the early days of the IAEA's history.  The inspectors didn't want to find things.  That is literally true.  When David Kay and his band of inspectors in Iraq discovered the Iraqi nuclear weapon program, they did so, they had to do that by violating IAEA's rules of engagement.

The IAEA was giving the Iraqis 6 to 12 hours notice before they went to a site, which, and our satellites were watching the Iraqis clean these things out. 

So, Kay took his guys in with no notice and they found the haluton program.  The IAEA was unhappy about that.  They told David that he was not going to be welcome on anymore inspections in Iraq, as a result of his not following the rules.  I'm not making this up, this is true.

The agency had a definite problem before the first Gulf War.  But, because it's failure was so obvious, be, literally, it was inspecting parts of a site where bombwork was going on in other buildings.  It  had to change.  It had to change its attitude.  And I think it has.  I think in Iran it's doing a much better job. 

It's engaged in the same iterative process that the inspectors used successfully in Iraq.  That is, the inspectee, nation being inspected.  I'll try not to sound like a law professor here, although it's pretty hard after all the years I put in.  But the inspectee has an obligation to tell the truth and to present a coherent picture of what its nuclear program is. 

The inspectors by continuing to poke at that and find holes in it and demand explanations and do just what the IAEA is doing now.  You can get closer and closer and closer to a coherent statement you can believe.  In Iraq, it was never possible to get to the end because the Iraqis had an official policy of lying, which revealed the basic problem or limitation within inspection.

Inspections are meant to verify things.  They're not meant to create agreements or to find things that have been hidden.  They're meant to verify statements.  You cannot verify a lie.  You can only verify the truth.

And, so, if you're inspecting a country that is lying, it's not going to work.  The only cases where I know of where you've had successful inspections have been cases where the country being inspected had an incentive to be truthful and to prove that.

When you get those conditions, inspections are going to work for you.  But when you don't have those conditions, you can inspect all you want, but you'll wind up sooner or later with a statement that look, these guys are not telling the truth.  These guys are not telling the truth.  An inspector can't find the truth.  In Iraq, we couldn't find out whether Iraq actually had stuff or didn't have stuff.  All we could find out at the end was, whether they were presenting a coherent picture of what they claimed that they had.

And the answer was they were not.  It was clear that that was the answer.

In Iran, I think there are a lot of lessons to be learned from Iraq, we seem to be going down the same road.  The Iranians don't seem to be telling the truth.  And so, were are we going to come out with inspections in Iran?  We're going to come out sooner or later with the statement, look, these guys, it just doesn't add up.  These guys aren't telling the truth.

We, the inspectors, cannot guarantee you that there is not something that shouldn't be there in a cave or a building somewhere.  But what we can tell you is that what we're being told doesn't square with--the reality that we're seeing doesn't square with the declarations.  It doesn't make sense.

That's where we are now.  The Iranians  have not told the truth up to now and, so, the agency's job--trying to keep on point here on the IAEA's job--the IAEA's job is to report that.  They've done it, but they haven't said the magic word that takes the case to the U.N. Security Council.

And I think one of the issues is, whether they're going to do that.  Because once they say that word and Blix was in this position in Iraq, once they say that word, it goes out of their hands and it goes into somebody else's hands.

So, if you're an inspector; if you're the IAEA; if you're even the Director General, you've got a problem, because if you say, look, I'm not being told the truth.  I can't get any further here, then you're going to lose the case.  Going somewhere else and, in effect, you have dropped out.  That was Blix's problem. 

So, I guess, I probably ought to wind up pretty quickly here.  I just thought it would be important to say what the limits you can expect--what are the limits you can expect out of the inspection process. 

Final note, it's often said that the IAEA's job is to sort of verify the NPT.  That is not true.  The NPT is a treaty with no verification mechanism.  There are many Articles, such as Article 1, which is not verified.  The IAEA does not verify compliance with the NPT.  There is no mechanism for verifying compliance with the NPT.  All the IAEA does under the NPT is make agreements, safeguards agreements with countries.  And then the IAEA determines whether those agreements have been fulfilled and that's it.

It's a very narrow function.  You can't expect anything other than that.  But you can expect that.  You can expect that when the IAEA runs up against that brick wall and can't get any further and is not being told the truth, you have to expect the agency to report that.  Because that's really the agency's job.

Okay, thanks, a lot.

MR. MURAVCHIK:  Gary, thank you very much.  And now, I said I'm not introducing anyone, but I must say that Mark Groombridge has been a colleague here at AEI for a number of years and it's really nice to welcome him back.  Mark.

MR. GROOMBRIDGE:  It's good to be back.  People ask me, you know, would I ever want to come back to AEI.  And my standard response is, ask me in 2017 after the second Cheney Administration and then we can have that discussion.  Although, as a U.S. government official now, I can't be provocative, but if I were, Joe, I thought that was a rousing audition for the Kerry Administration you gave just moments ago.  But I can't say that.  But, nevertheless.

No, thank you very much, Josh, and I'm going to agree with most of the comments that have been made here today.

Let me clear, though, about the lens through which I view this problem.  I'm Mr. Bolton's advisor on Asia.  And so, I'm going to limit my problems primarily to the case study of North Korea.  Although I'll be happy to discuss some of the broader issues.

I think one area, though, where I would have to disagree with Joe is the idea that the Administration has done nothing or that we have sat idly by watching the problems of Iran and North Korea go.  I think the best evidence I would have to support to the contrary to that is the fact that I received my United mileage-plus one K card just two weeks ago, basically, because I've been shuttling back and forth between Asia and the United States, engaging in very serious and rigorous diplomacy with North Korea's surrounding neighbors about this very serious problem.

It's not simple.  It's not easy.  And I would say that, in this case, although I can't really comment about it in contrast to Iran and, perhaps, to Iraq.  The IAEA has actually played a very positive role in the case of North Korea.

Primarily in the sense that if I had to pinpoint what I thought was the most serious miscalculation North Korea probably made, it was in the last two years with the recent developments that we've had with the uranium enrichment program and the six-party talks.

It's that North Korea has underestimated the degree to which the international community views this as a problem.  I think that--I think Joe was correct to point out that, yes, there were some serious risks on the Iraq issue.  I think North Korea might have looked at those risks and said that the international community would be equally divided on the North Korean situation.

In fact, that has not turned out to be the case.  The IAEA has played, I think, an important or not just technical role in the past in North Korea, but I'm going to go further and say there have actually been some political benefits, as well.  Even though I agree with the previous speakers that their primary role has been focused on technical issues only.

Let me just begin with a very brief  history about the IAEA's role in North Korea, which is to say that it's had a very long and deep history.  They have been interacting with North Korea now for close to 27 years.  North Korea--the initial safeguards agreement, was signed in 1977.  Then North Korea ceded to the NPT in 1985 and then the next safeguards agreement was concluded in 1992.

Unfortunately, at that point, discrepancies began to arise almost immediately.  And it was actually Hans Blix who, at the time, who was Director General, who was in charge of inspecting the North Korean situation or handling the situation, who called for special inspections, which North Korea--which then led to the crisis in '92/'93, subsequently to the agreed framework.

But it was sort of the rigor which the IAEA wanted to investigate and verify the completeness and correctness of the initial declaration that North Korea offered, which they presented to the IAEA.  Which, initially helped expose the problem and began North Korea's, I think, period of intense intransigence, beginning, initially, in '93/'94 and then culminating after the failure of the agreed framework was made clear with the exposure of the uranium enrichment program by Mr. Kelly in October of 2002.

Ironically, it was the IAEA, itself, which criticized or was one of the sharpest critics of the agreed framework signed in 1994 by the Clinton Administration.  The reason, and here, I'm quoting Mohammad El Baradei, himself in an April 27, 2003, interview with Walt Whitzer on CNN, was that the agreed framework was, quote, "not comprehensive enough in terms of verification and that any new agreement should give the agencies" the IAEA, included, of course, "as much authority to make sure that we will not be cheated once more in North Korea." 

Essentially, what the agreed framework did was it limited the IAEA's role to only monitoring specific parts of Pyongyang and keeping certain facilities under seal.

The problem with the agreed framework, though was that it froze the problem or it postponed the problem.  I often get upset when people say that the agreed framework solved the problem.  And it was intransigent or I should say, blustering Bush Administration, which ignite the crisis in North Korea.

North Korea's uranium enrichment program was going to be exposed at one point, if they didn't declare it themselves.  So the point being was that it was incumbent upon the Bush Administration to confront the North Koreans about this problem.  And I would hasten to add that the uranium enrichment program began interest he Clinton Administration.

Now, I'm not faulting the Clinton Administration for ignoring this problem because the true intelligence or the intelligence that we got on this matter, didn't really come to light until the summer of 2002, though it's difficult to know exactly how a Gore Administration would have handled the problem. 

We felt it important, though, to confront the North Koreans, declare that they were in material breach of the agreed framework.

Complementing that role, though was the IAEA, though.  And I'd like to go back to some of the political benefits that the IAEA Board of Governors was able to provide in its various resolutions and in reporting this to the U.N. Security Council.

After North Korea kicked out inspectors on December 27, 2002, the IAEA Board of Governors took this issue up almost immediately.  They issued an initial resolution in early--I think, January 6, 2003, calling upon North Korea to readmit inspectors and to come back into compliance.  And then on February 13, they reported--they formally adopted a resolution of noncompliance of North Korea's safeguards agreement with the IAEA, which reported it to the Security Council.

This, I think, helped bring the international community on-board to recognize that this is a serious problem; one which needs to be confronted by the entire international community.

So, I find it deeply ironic when people accuse the Bus Administration of sort of maverick cowboy unilaterlism when, in fact, we have been championing the efforts to adopt a multilateral or to bring a bunch of nations together in a coherent and cohesive way to address this problem.

The current way that it's  manifesting itself is in the six-party talks in Beijing, which, unfortunately, as Mr. Bolton indicated earlier is something that the North Koreans at least seem to be stalling a little bit on.  Perhaps they're waiting for the outcome of the U.S. elections.  They've also cited the case of the South Korean example.

I think it's impossible to know exactly what is going on in the North Koreans minds.

In terms of the future role for the IAEA, specifically, in the case of North Korea, I would say that the situation is unclear.  It's difficult to know, because North Koreans have specifically accused the IAEA of being, quote, "a shaggy dog," of the United States or a "cat's paw" of the United States and has specifically referred to El Baradei as a lacky of the United States.

I, certainly, would disagree with that characterization and assessment by the North Koreans.  But the North Koreans have indicated that any future verification regime, they would want to exclude the IAEA from this.

I think that is a mistake on their part and it would be difficult to envision a verification regime outside of at least some role for the IAEA.  The reason is, of course, that the IAEA brings some degree of international legitimacy to the issue.  It enables us to say that we aren't engaging in a double standard as North Korea suggests in the case of South Korea.

So, let me just wrap up by saying that I know I focused my remarks more on sort of the positive externalities, if you will, or some of the political side benefits of the IAEA, in terms of raising the consciousness in the international community of the North Korean issue.

It's not to say that there aren't some technical problems with the ways that the IAEA can be improved or strengthened, that's not my area of expertise.

But one thing I can tell you having now, at least, racked up the miles to show that we aren't completely ignoring the situation, Joe, is that when we can point to the IAEA Board of Governors resolution that helps with others to say this is a serious problem.  It's something we need to address.  And it's not just a U.S./North Korea problem.  I'll leave it at that.

MR. MURAVCHIK:  Thank you, Mark.  Before we turn to questions are any of the panelists that want very much to respond to something that one of the other panelist said?  If not, the panelists were very self-disciplined about keeping within their time, so they have time for lots of questions. 

Before I open the floor for questions.  We are very fortunate to have Henry Sokolski here who's the head of the Nonproliferation Education--what's the C stand for, Council Center and they have a new report hot off the presses or maybe not even off the presses, maybe it's a preview.  And we put it in your packets and I asked Henry, if he would just take a minute or two and flag it for you.  Henry?

MR. SOKOLSKI:  I'll try not to do that.  It's in the package.  It's a report entitled "A Fresh Examination of the Proliferation Dangers of Light Water Reactors."  It's about a two-year investment of time by a number of engineers and weapons designers.  I recommend it and it goes directly to one of the things that's going to be a bit worrisome in the future, and more worrisome over time.

We got a peek at this with regards to Bushehr.  And that is, one of the conflicts of interest which each one of the panelists raised is that the IAEA really is in the power promotion business, nuclear power promotion business.  And their key lead candidate is something called the light water reactor.

Now, it turns out, everyone, including many U.S. officials over many administrations, both Democratic and Republican, have said that these machines are proliferation resistant.

And, indeed, compared to other machines, there are ways in which they are.  But this study examines how, in fact, they're not as proliferation resistant as they've been sold.

And, in particular, the machine, for example, in Iran will, as the footnote which you heard John Bolton explain about lightly enriched uranium being very close to highly enriched uranium, will, in fact, have many hundreds of tons of lightly enriched uranium sitting next to the machine, which can be diverted and very quickly turned into bombs. 

And it will also generate material which is called spentfield, that will contain material that will be near weapons grade in the first 15 months.

The reason this is important, all of these examinations, and they go into greater depths--charts, even learn about weapons design, everything else is in the report--is that it turns out the one ace-in-the-hole that everyone here has indirectly applauded is the--they call it the additional protocol, in fact is going to reduce, in most instances the amount of attention paid to these diversion possibilities.  And that, I think, at a minimum, needs correction and attention. 

And, in addition, I think we're going to have to deep inflict ourselves as members, politically, and start saying that machines that have no economic justification aren't simply enough in the case of light water reactors.  They ought to be resisted.  And some neutral rules with regard to this kind of matter need to be established so these things don't go just anywhere.

MR. MURAVCHIK:  Thank you.  That wasn't a question, because it wasn't intended to be.  I wanted to get a chance there to alert you to the NPC's new study.  But any of our panelists want to comment on or you're certainly free to, if you wish to before we open to other questions.  Gary.

MR. MILHOLLIN:  I'll make a comment.  Of course, Henry, I just got the document, haven't had a chance to read it yet.  But, I, like you, have been concerned with the statement, particularly in connection with North Korea that light water reactors are proliferation resistant.

And, technically, that's not true, every reactor makes plutonium and all plutonium can be used in bombs.  And any reactor, any light water reactor, as you well know, can be operated in such a way that the plutonium it produces can be optimized for weapon use.  And so, it's just not true that light water reactors are inherently or necessarily less likely to be diverted to weapons purposes than, say, heavy water reactors or graphite reactors.  It's just--I'd just like to say that it's a good thing that you did that. 

I think we ought to debunk this idea that light water reactors are somehow more benign than others.  I say that as a former administrative judge at NRC.  I've spent a lot of time worrying about reactors.

MR. MURAVCHIK:  We'll put it out for questions.  We even allow comments as long as they're brief.  And please remember to introduce yourself.

MR. HORNER:  Dan Horner, from McGraw-Hill again.  I wonder if I could raise a country that hasn't been discussed much, which was Libya.  And particularly in the context with the IAEA, because it seems--it just proves the hypothesis that IAEA seemed to be tougher in this case than the U.S.  And I say that because in the last report, the Board of Governors, the IAEA Director General noted there are still questions about the weapons design information that Libya has and contamination on centrifuge components.  But in spite of that the U.S. lifted sanctions on Libya or some sanctions on Libya citing the progress on weapons of mass destruction and it was justified in testimony on the Hill last week.

I was wondering, if maybe Mark could lead off and the others could comment on that.

MR. GROOMBRIDGE:  Well, sure, I'm happy to.  I don't know that I would characterize it as the U.S. or the IAEA was tougher than the United States.  We made a specific agreement with Libya with regard to WMD, various other aspects, particularly after the PANAM 103 and terrorist bombing of the airplane was solved, those difficult questions.

We have been very clear that we still have issues with Libya, particularly on the human rights front.  We're still investigating claims and press reports that, perhaps, Mr. Kadafi was interested in assassinating various Saudi leaders.  So, but it's more just--I think what I'm trying to say is that it's not so much that I would say it's tougher versus weaker.  The United States had a specific agreement with Libya, in conjunction with the U.K.  We're biding by the terms of that agreement. 

We see the IAEA's role in Libya as important and more in terms of long-term verification.

MR.          :  There are other issues, other than weapons of mass destruction that are still not resolved and the new administration has been very clear about that.  But it would seem that the way the lifting of the sanctions was framed was because of the progress of mass destructions.

MR. GROOMBRIDGE:  Sure, there's been tremendous progress.

MR.          :  There has been progress, but there still would appear to be some pretty major open questions, though, so I'm just--that's what I'm trying--weapons of mass destruction--with terrorism and other issues.

MR. GROOMBRIDGE:  There are still unanswered questions, we are still in conversations with the Libyans on this issue and until those questions are fully resolved, you will not see, at least from what I understand, a complete lifting of sanctions.

MR. CIRINCIONE [?]:  Let me just comment very quickly.  I think the Administration has done exactly the right thing hereon Libya and handling it the way they did, they really have laid out a model for how we expect other countries to behave.

The Libyan model is how disarmament should be done.  And the U.S. has been very creative and flexible in combining both the international inspectors under the IAEA and U.S. officials and U.S. inspection personnel working side-by-side with them hand-in-hand.  As you are probably aware, there are some issues there, the IAEA wants more authority.  But it's going more like--and the IAEA's really proving its value here.  It's doing its work.  It wants to dot the I's and cross the That's and these are important dots that they want to make here.  There's real questions about the contamination of the centrifuges that would be obtained from a, quote, "foreign supplier."  That is, Pakistan.  And they want to do sampling in the Pakistan named here as a supplier state--not names in the report, but everybody knows who it is--they want to do sampling in Pakistan to verify that the contamination, that the isotope that they found on the Libyan centrifuges were, indeed--did indeed come from the Pakistan source.

And this is important because they want to match it up with--

[Technical interruption. Tape change.]

MR. CIRINCIONE [?]:  --the United States could be working more closely together to get a major nonNATO ally Pakistan to cooperate with us in running down the truth behind the origins of these centrifuges and to get at a better understanding as to whether the Iranian, the contamination at the Iranian sites came from Iran producing it's own highly enriched uranium or if it is, in fact, as the Iranians claim, the result of contamination of used centrifuges, basically, that they bought from the Pakistanis.

A key issue is--this is the key issue in Iran, it's intimately linked to what's going on in Libya, the IAEA and the Administration are doing a good job but they need to do a lot more to get that, as the report says, the cooperation of other member states, which remains essential to the successful completion of these inspections.

MR. MILHOLLIN [?]  I have one comment.  You know, when you look at the history of what Libya's done, one that strikes me is that for a number of years, Libya was a member of the NPT, supposed to be a nonweapons state, but had already imported things that it didn't report; it was doing things that it didn't report; it was in clear violation of its obligations.  And it was being inspected by the IAEA at all those times. 

And the IAEA didn't find any of that activity.  It was only when the Libyans decided to come in from the cold that the information started coming out.  And so, I think this proves a point I made earlier, which is that if the country you're inspecting isn't telling the truth, inspections aren't going to find that.  When they really become useful, as Joe says is when the country starts telling the truth.  And then you can kick in the--all of the scientific capabilities and forensic capabilities and you can begin to verify what you're being told.  And that's happening in Libya.

MR. GROOMBRIDGE:  Could I just--

MR. MILHOLLIN:  But it didn't happen previously.  And so, we had a case where, like Iraq, Libya was in violation of it's NPT allegations and wasn't being discovered?

MR. GROOMBRIDGE:  Could I just follow-up on that?  Clearly, in the case of Iran, Iran has not been telling us the truth.  Or let me put it another way.  They've told us various versions of a story about their activities.  And, yet, what we find in this 18-month process of inspections is that they've been--the inspectors have been getting--have been unpeeling this onion.  And so, here we have a case where Iran appears to be lying to us and we are getting closer to the truth.

So, I'm not sure that it's true that we can't inspect a country that's lying to us.

MR. MILHOLLIN:  Well, I guess my point is that inspections only can work up to a point in that case.  You can never reach the point where you are content--that you know enough to feel secure if the other country is not telling the truth.  You can get from point a to point b, which we did in Iraq.  I mean, in Iraq, we discovered a tremendous amount of stuff.  We destroyed tons of chemical weapons.  We found out about their missile programs, destroyed missile engines.

We made a tremendous amount of progress in Iraq, but because Iraq's policy was not to tell the truth, we could never get to the end where we said, okay, this problem has been solved.  I think, unless Libya changes its attitude, we'll get there in the case of Libya, but we're not going to get there in the case of Iran unless Iran has a change of policy.

MR. GROOMBRIDGE:  I mean, I would agree with that, but I think the point to bring home from this is that the IAEA can serve powerful and different roles and varying roles depending on the country, which is to say, I mean, look, you know, PSI is Bolton's baby, you know, it was the instigator or I would say the impetus which caused Libya, I think, to help make their strategic decision to allow inspectors in.

But the IAEA can play a long-term and positive role in terms of increasing the international community's confidence over the long-term that Libya has, in fact, come in from the cold.

In the case of North Korea, where they're not allowed in, they can signal that the international community is deeply concerned about this problem and it's not just a simple, you know, U.S./North Korea problem.

I think--but I would have to agree with Joe here that in the case of Iran that you might say that it is, you know, only peeling away some layers of the onion, but it is, in fact doing that.  I think that's helped us with the Europeans, in terms of convincing them that, in fact, they do have a weapons program and I am confident that in November, regardless of the outcome of the election this will be referred to the Security Council at that time.

MR. NELSON:  Chris Nelson, Nelson Report, again.  Can't let Mark get away with all this.  North Korea, in a strange way, seems to be telling the truth, right?  They told Jim Kelly something about an HEU program, which somebody, sort of witnessed a couple years ago.  And yesterday, at the U.N., they said something about they have not-they took the statement about having a right to have nuclear weapons another step, apparently, saying things that could be interpreted as we do have them.

I'll confess, I've managed to be thoroughly confused for the last three years on this subject.  You've tried to help me out to understand why we say we're willing to talk, but when they say they're willing to talk, we say we won't talk because that's paying blackmail and that sort of stuff.

You know, it seems that we deliberately chase our tail, let them chase their tail.  They've done everything except fly over here and say, let's make a deal.  Help me out.  What am I missing about truth telling and a desire to negotiate.

MR. GROOMBRIDGE:  There's a difference between a willingness--Chris, you have to choose your verbs carefully.  We are willing to talk to the North Koreans.  No preconditions whatsoever, okay?  We will sit down with them.  The mantra after the first six-months of the Bush Administration, when we had the Korea policy review was, anytime, anyplace, no preconditions.

But there's a difference between sitting down with someone at the table and talking with them versus what you are saying, which is that where you bring in the blackmail part.  What you say at the table also matters and what we have been very clear about and I think is absolutely the right policy is that we are not going to give North Korea incentives.  We are not going to reward their bad behavior for coming back into compliance with obligations that they have violated.

I mean, they have violated pretty much every single international agreement they have ever signed.  So, we will talk to the North Koreans about how they can come back into compliance, but the idea that we're going to offer them carrots or give them rewards to do so, is an entirely different question.

[OFF MICROPHONE - UNINTELLIGIBLE]

MR. GROOMBRIDGE:  Well, we tried rewards.  Chris, we tried your route once, it was called the Agreed Framework of 1994.  Where we did offer them rewards and carrots.  They rewarded us, then, with not just a plutonium program, but a uranium enrichment program, as well.

MR. MURAVCHIK:  I'm not going to let a colloquy go on endlessly.

[OFF MICROPHONE - UNINTELLIGIBLE]

MR. GROOMBRIDGE:  Just very briefly, quick 10-second answer.  That's why we have adopted a truly multilateral form, the six-party talks, to address this situation, so that it brings all interested parties to bear because we are interested in a lasting solution, not a temporary freeze where North Korea can kick out inspectors again, we had to confront them on uranium enrichment, they were in material breach.

MR. DINMORE:  Thank you, Guy Dinmore from The Financial Times.  I'd like to ask the panel if they think the IAEA has the capacity or the ability to discover whether or not there's a Brazilian onion that can be unpeeled and whether there is a link there with A.Q. Khan and his proliferation services.

MR. CIRINCIONE:  That's a very interesting point.  Let me start with that so Mark can think how he's going to answer this.

MR. GROOMBRIDGE:  My answer is, no comment.

MR. CIRINCIONE:  There's been rumors about this, that Brazil is, in fact, one of the customers of the A.Q. Kahn network.  We need Brazil to allow the IAEA inspectors full access to their uranium enrichment program so we can understand the origins of that equipment. 

It also raised--Brazil is not cooperating sufficiently with the IAEA inspectors.  This is a serious problem.  It produces this problem of double standards, that the really bad guys use to deflect the international spotlight and inspections.

We see already, as the undersecretary pointed out, that North Korea is using the problems with South Korea as a diplomatic or propaganda excuse to justify it's program.  Iran is fully aware of the example that Brazil is setting and is already talking about double standards.  And they have a point.  And the undersecretary raised it.  You cannot allow new nations to acquire the ability to enrich uranium that can be used to make fuel rods one month and nuclear bombs the next. 

And if we can't allow Iran to do it; we can't allow Brazil to do it, either; we can't allow South Korea to do it, either.  The President of the United States has set the right standards in his February 11 speech.  We have to put an end to these programs, no new nation should be allowed to acquire these capabilities.  The problem we have is figuring out how to do that; how to get that agreement; what's the path forward?

The President has proposed using the nuclear supplier group to do that.  Simply stop exporting this material to these new nations.  that hasn't worked so far.  No action on that front.  Can't get the supplier's group to agree with that.

The Director of the IAEA, Mohammad El Baradei, has proposed internationalizing facilities, placing all uranium enrichment facilities and plutonium reprocessing facilities under international control.  And idea, certainly worth pursuing, but it hasn't advanced much since the director said it.

This is a serious problem, this is why we at Carnegie came up with this universal compliance report.  We think if you're going--and as Brent Scowcroff pointed out in a very useful op-ed several months ago, in order to solve the Iranian problem, you have to solve the Brazil problem at the same time. 

And this drives the Brazilians nuts, by the way.  They don't like being put in the same sentence with Iran and I completely understand it.  They're not identical, it's not the same case, but it's the same problem.  Reforming the fuel cycle.  We have to get serious about this.  It's going to take a lot of heavy lifting to do this.  There's billions of dollars invested in the fuel cycle, we have to find a solution that is acceptable to all the parties in order to do this.

A good place to start with that is for Brazil to come clean on the origins of its uranium enrichment program and to be open to the idea of discussing not pursuing that program and seeking the fuel for its reactors through other means.

MR. MILHOLLIN:  I have a comment on that.  I think it's fine to tinker with the international regimes, but they're pretty much irrelevant in the case of Brazil and Iran, because Brazil and Iran have what they need.

The Brazilians have a large commercial-size enrichment plant.  The problem is, that they're not going to let the IAEA look at it to the extent the IAEA wants.  And, as I understand it, it raises the possibility that there could be enrichment that would be undetected under the arrangement that Brazilians are proposing.

So, what we have in Brazil is really a challenge to the inspection regime.  And if Brazil succeeds then, obviously, the Iranians would demand equal treatment. 

MR. CIRINCIONE:  Right.

MR. MILHOLLIN:  If nothing more, if for no other reason than simply because it would be too insulting not to.  So, the Brazil issue is an issue of the integrity of safeguards.  That is, that's the issue that the IAEA is not contending with.  The larger issue in Brazil is whether Brazil should fall in the category of countries that don't really need enrichment, such as Iran.

If you look at the economics of the Brazilian situation, it doesn't make any sense for Brazil to enrich uranium.  The uranium Brazil will enrich is going to cost a lot more than it would cost Brazil to buy it on the world market, which Brazil is doing now.  So, why would you do that.  Why would you waste money enriching uranium?  There must be some other motive.  The burden of opinion is that Brazil is not going for the bomb.  But Brazil simply wants to enrich uranium for national prestige. 

But that's a tough one.  Because if you take the position that Iran's enrichment effort is illegitimate because it's unnecessary, uneconomical, and doesn't make sense, then you almost have to take that position with respect to Brazil, because Brazil's excuses for enriching uranium are no better than Iran's.  In fact they're basically the same and it's diseconomic in both cases.  And, but Brazil has an additional element, and that is the challenge to the inspection regime.

But since we have a tremendously able state department, they're going to work this out.  And so that's, that--now, I'm going to pass to my next panelist.  And he's going to tell you how the government is going to handle this.

MR.          :  No comment.

MR. MILHOLLIN:  That was, that was a joke.

MR.          :  Right.  No.  Right.  No, I know.  Well, but I think probably our colleague from Brazil is itching to respond to that.  So I will--

MR.          :  If there's a colleague from Brazil here, it would be great to have that comment.  And by the way, I'm very interested in going down to Rio to investigate--

[Laughter.]

MR.          :  December, January--

MR. COSTA:  I'm Bran Costa [ph.] from the Embassy of Brazil.  I just want to make a comment on what Mr. Milhollin just said.  I am afraid I don't agree with him when he says that Brazil is a challenge of the inspection regime.  I think this is not the real problem.  This is not the question here. 

The problem with the Rosan [ph.] Plant in Brazil, and everybody knows that, is not about if there will be safeguards, if or whether the IAEA is allowed to inspect that plant.  The problem there is only a question of technology, new technology.  What means the IAEA is allowed, inspectors are allowed to check what is coming in the reactor and what is the outcome.  The only thing they are not allowed right now to see is the technology used to produce this outcome.  That's the difference.  So with the sophisticated equipment of the IAEA, it's very easy for them to check if Brazil is enriching uranium in a higher grade or not.  It's easy. 

And I don't think the reasons for Brazil wanting to produce uranium are the same of that of Iran.  On the contrary, the reasons may see the same, but the credibility of each country is different.  The credential of each country is different.  So I think the international community can be assured of the allegations of the declarations of the Brazilian Government.  I cannot tell the same thing about the Iranian Government.  But it's not for me to say anything about another government.  So I just wanted to make it clear for everybody here that there is not a problem of inspection.  We're not preventing IAEA inspectors to see what is happening in the Rosan Plant.  We're just safeguarding our new technology.  And that's all.

MR. MURAVCHIK:  Anybody want to comment on that?  Okay.

MR.          :  The problem is not enriching above a certain concentration of U235.  The problem is unmonitored enrichment at whatever level.  And if, if this problem were so simple, as you suggest, then why hasn't the IAEA agreed?

MR. COSTA:  They just want to see everything, including the technology.

MR. MURAVCHIK:  We're short on time.  I'll try to squeeze in a couple more questions if they're brief questions.  And we'll try to give brief answers.  Mario, you haven't had the floor?

MR. LOYOLA:  I just--

MR. MURAVCHIK:  Introduce yourself, please.

MR. LOYOLA:  Mario Loyola.  Our friend just said that it's easy to monitor, for inspections to monitor what goes into a reactor and what comes out.  That's true and that's the justification for the people that have proposed the light water reactor programs that Mr. Sokolski is worried about in his study.  It is a lot more difficult to, if a country develops indigenous enrichment capabilities and indigenous reprocessing capabilities, it is much more difficult for the IAEA to exclude the possibility that those capabilities have been used for illegal purposes.  And that's why the establishment by non nuclear states of a complete nuclear fuel cycle is so worrisome.  And since it's technically legal under the NPT, we're struggling with a way to solve that problem. 

So we're talking about sort of several degrees of, sort of several layers of problems.  Because Mr. Sokolski points out a problem with the light water reactor programs.  The NPT makes the nuclear fuel cycle essentially legal, which is 90 percent of the way to a bomb.  But even what's clearly illegal under the safeguard agreements, which is disclosure violations, we've established over the last year and-a-half that disclosure violations are not going to be subject to enforcement.  So from a lawyer's point of view, there's a question whether even if the NPT makes certain things illegal, whether enforcement isn't so weak that these treaties and safeguard agreements don't really constitute international law at all and are just voluntary norms.

And I would suggest, one more comment, if the credibility problems of a single administration and a single member of the board of governors can lead to a collapse of enforcement at the IAEA, then the problem is probably more institutional than political.

MR.         :  Henry, but I appeal to each person for brevity, and we are out of time.

MR.          :  And you asked Henry?

[Laughter.]

MR.          :  The sum of all your fears.

This discussion highlights something that the state department, big important non profit groups that get lots of attention, and ones that have tremendous integrity should all be trying to answer.  Why is it that the burden of proof for a violation is placed on the board of governors and they have to make the determination, rather than the inspected party?  What is it that makes us not want to get behind even a French proposal that the burden of proof should be on the inspected party and when the board cannot clearly agree that someone is in full compliance or fully cooperating, some minimal, automatic action should be in play?

MR. MURAVCHIK:  I'm going to take one more question and then you can all get a chance to answer one or the other.  This gentleman is the last one.  Briefly, please.

MR. MIASARA:  Mr. Milhollin--

MR. MURAVCHIK:  Say your name once again.

MR. MIASARA:  I'm Mike Miasara [ph.].

You said you cannot verify a lie.  You can only verify the truth.  In retrospect Saddam Hussein told the truth.  And Rivaldi [ph.] was very close to verifying the truth.  And, yet, one country didn't like it and therefore it invaded Iraq.  If you were a leader of those inspected countries, what would you do?  Tell the truth or tell a lie?

MR. MILHOLLIN:  If I'm the leader of what?

MR. MIASARA:  On