Director General Mohamed ElBaradei briefed the press on the Agency´s verification work in Iran, South Korea, and Brazil, before the opening of the IAEA Board of Governors meeting in Vienna this week. Following is an unofficial transcript of his remarks:
Iran
On Iran I am going to report that we have completed our work with regard to the verification of the suspension with one exception, and that is the request by Iran to exempt 20 centrifuges for R&D without using nuclear materials.
This is an issue which we are still discussing with the Iranian authorities and I hope that I will be able to update the Board on this issue in the next hours or day.
We are making good progress. It was difficult at the beginning but since December of last year we have seen an appreciable improvement in co-operation, access to sites, and access to information. Therefore we are now in a position to say that declared materials in Iran have not been diverted but we still have a lot of work to do with regard to possible undeclared material or activity.
This is usually a long-term process. We would expect to take a longer time in Iran because of the undeclared nature of the programme for many years. To speed that process I look to Iran to demonstrate full transparency and full co-operation. We are on the right track but we still have a lot of work to do. We understand much better Iran's programme now, but as I have stated before, the jury is still out on our ability to provide assurance that everything has been declared to us.
We are working three fronts.
Republic of Korea With regard to the Republic of Korea (South Korea), we are saying that although the materials have not been significant, the nature of the activities, enrichment and reprocessing are a matter of serious concern. However, we are also saying that we have not seen any continuation of these experiments, which is the good news.
Brazil We have been able to reach an agreement in principle with the Brazilian government on a safeguards approach to verify the enrichment facilities in Brazil, at the Resende facility. An approach which will enable us to do credible inspections but at the same time take care of Brazil´s need to protect certain commercial sensitivity inside the facility. That approach has been, as I have said, agreed on principle and I expect in the next couple of weeks, to be finalized in a formal way.