REVISING THE CONVENTION ON THE PHYSICAL PROTECTION OF NUCLEAR MATERIAL—CHAPTER VI

On July 8, 2005, the Conference to Consider and Adopt Proposed Amendments to the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material (CPPNM or Convention) [1] adopted by acclamation an Amendment to the Convention. The CPPNM is one of the universal instruments related to the prevention and suppression of international terrorism [2]. The newly adopted Amendment culminated nearly eight years of effort to strengthen the Convention. The present paper, which is the sixth in a series of papers about the effort to achieve a significantly strengthened CPPNM, focuses on the period between May 25, 2004, when the Foreign Minister of Austria, on behalf of the Governments of Austria and twenty-four other States Parties to the CPPNM, submitted proposed amendments to the CPPNM, and July 8, 2005, when the Conference concluded its work. Together, the papers provide a history of the amendment effort, which began in 1998, when the United States informally circulated an amendment proposal, which, while not adopted, triggered a series of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)-sponsored informal, open-ended experts meetings between November 1999 and March 2003 on CPPNM amendment. The first five papers, presented at the Institute of Nuclear Materials Management (INMM) 41st-45th Annual Meetings, reported on progress toward amendment from 1998 through June 2004 [3,4,5,6,7]. The first four papers [3,4,5,6] reported on progress in the IAEA-sponsored meetings, including the work of the Open- Ended Drafting Group of Legal and Technical Experts that IAEA Director General ElBaradei convened to prepare a proposal for a well-defined amendment to the Convention. The fifth paper [7] described milestones from March 2003 through May 25, 2004, when Austria’s proposal was formally submitted to the Director General in his capacity as Convention Depositary. That action, done pursuant to the amendment procedures laid out in Article 20 of the CPPNM, triggered the formal process of amendment. Austria’s proposal built especially on the work of the Drafting Group [5,6].