Year
2005
Abstract
Under comprehensive safeguards agreements (INFCIRC/153) a “special inspection” is an inspection that is additional to specified routine inspection effort, or involves access to information or locations in addition those specified for ad hoc and routine inspections. Special inspections offer an important mechanism for resolving matters that are beyond the scope of routine inspections. In practice special inspections have been little used, and they have come to assume a narrow meaning, with substantial accusatory and political overtones. In 1992 the IAEA Board of Governors concluded that special inspections should occur only on “rare occasions”. The last formal request to undertake special inspections occurred in 1993. Since the early 1990s the safeguards system has undergone substantial evolution, and the importance to safeguards credibility of greater availability and use of information, and greater physical access for inspectors, is now understood and accepted. This paper discusses whether the high threshold for special inspections assumed in past Board deliberations is consistent with contemporary expectations for the safeguards system and for cooperation between states and the Agency. The paper also discusses the relevance of special inspections now that the additional protocol – with its complementary access mechanism – has entered widespread application.