IAEA Board of Governors Meeting
AUKUS Trilateral Statement on the Adoption of the Agenda
12 September 2022
Thank you, Chair,
I take the floor on behalf of the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia.
As we stated at the June 2022 Board of Governors meeting, we fully support the inclusion of an agenda item at this Board meeting to discuss the IAEA’s safeguards mandate in the context of AUKUS in light of the Director General’s report updating the Board on this topic. We thank the Director General for his report and look forward to discussing its contents under the agenda item 8d as proposed by the AUKUS partners.
It will not have escaped the Board’s attention that there are two agenda items on AUKUS proposed for this Board, in addition to the citation under the AOB item of the DG’s recently released report.
We regret that the PRC feels it necessary to continue to table a politically-motivated item on AUKUS. The UK, the US and Australia do not support the inclusion of this additional item, which is clearly intended to politicize the Board discussion and discuss issues that are beyond the IAEA mandate—a mandate already clearly addressed by the DG’s report and by our proposed 8d agenda item.
While it is disappointing that we find ourselves with two AUKUS items on the agenda, we have chosen not to pursue procedural action to remove item 10. This is because, once again, the Board has genuinely pressing items to discuss and the AUKUS partners do not believe it would be in the broader interests of our collective work at the Board to extend our deliberations through a procedural dispute at the adoption of the agenda.
For the good of the Agency and consistent with our shared desire to preserve the technical role of the Agency and this Board, we reserve the right to contest such highly politicised agenda items in the future should others persist in ignoring what we believe to be the view shared by an overwhelming number of Board members, namely, the view that discussion of AUKUS at the IAEA should remain focused on the IAEA mandate and not politicize Board discussions, especially at a time when the world is relying so heavily on the Agency playing well its role as credible and independent implementer of its technical mandates.
Chair,
We look forward to discussion of the AUKUS report under agenda item 8d.
Thank you, Chair.