IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei will visit Libya 23-24 February 2004 to meet with senior Libyan officials and review progress in the Agency’s work. Libya has asked the IAEA to ensure through verification that all of Libya’s nuclear activities are placed under safeguards and exclusively for peaceful purposes.
In that regard, Libya has agreed to take the necessary steps to conclude an Additional Protocol to its NPT Safeguards Agreement, which will provide the IAEA with broader inspection rights, and to pursue with the IAEA a policy of full transparency and active co-operation.
The Director General's February visit is the second in three months to Libya. In late December 2003, he was accompanied by an IAEA team of experts to initiate an in-depth process of verification of all of Libya's past and present nuclear activities. That visit followed meetings held in Vienna on 20 December 2003 between Dr. ElBaradei and H.E. Engineer Matooq Mohamed Matooq, Assistant Secretary for Services Affairs of the General People's Committee of Libya. In that meeting, Mr. Matooq informed Dr. ElBaradei of Libya's decision to eliminate "materials, equipments and programmes which lead to the production of internationally proscribed weapons".