IAEA Receives Iraq's Nuclear-related Declaration

The Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, announced that the IAEA received this evening, Sunday, 8 December 2002, at its Headquarters in Vienna, an approximately 2400 page declaration on Iraq's nuclear programme. The declaration consists of about 2100 pages in English and 300 pages in Arabic.

The declaration was submitted by the Government of Iraq in response to paragraph 3 of Security Council resolution 1441 (8 November 2002), which requires Iraq to provide to UNMOVIC, the IAEA and to the Security Council, not later than 30 days of the date of that resolution, with "a currently accurate, full, and complete declaration of all aspects of its programmes to develop chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, and other delivery systems... as well as all other chemical, biological, and nuclear programmes, including any which it claims are for purposes not related to weapon production or material".

"The IAEA will immediately begin to assess this important new document," said Mr. ElBaradei, "including the painstaking and systematic cross-checking of the information provided by Iraq against information which the IAEA already has, information that it expects to receive from other Member States, as contemplated in resolution 1441, and results of past and present Agency verification activities."

Complete assessment of the declaration will be time consuming, particularly in light of the need to translate the 300 pages of Arabic text into English. However, the IAEA expects to be able to provide a preliminary analysis of the document to the Security Council within the next ten days, with a fuller assessment to be provided when it reports to the Council at the end of January.