The Militant - November 23, 2004 -- Brazil cedes sovereignty, agrees to submit to UN nuclear ‘inspections’

Vol. 68/No. 43 November 23, 2004

Brazil cedes sovereignty, agrees to
submit to UN nuclear ‘inspections’

BY MICHAEL ITALIE
The deal between the government of Brazil and the United Nations nuclear agency allowing “inspections” of Brazil’s uranium enrichment plant is nearly sealed. Media reports the first week of November quote diplomats who say the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has tentatively agreed to Brasilia’s proposal that it have access to some parts of the centrifuges, but not the hulls of the equipment.

The Workers Party government had denied the IAEA entry to the Resende enrichment facility 60 miles outside Brasilia earlier this year. In mid-October, however, Brasilia bowed to imperialist pressure to admit the “inspectors” into the plant in a violation of the country’s sovereignty. Under the banner of “nonproliferation” of nuclear weapons, the IAEA has become more and more the tool used by Washington and its imperialist allies in their efforts to pressure Brasilia to curtail its production of nuclear fuel to expand the country’s electrification. The U.S. government and the UN agency have warned Brasilia that blocking IAEA agents would set a precedent that the governments of Iran, north Korea, or others could follow.

Brasilia’s opposition to IAEA entry to Resende had been based on protecting the design to its advanced technology. “They [UN inspectors] have generally approved the Brazilian proposal, based on the one the IAEA uses to inspect Urenco,” said one unnamed diplomat cited by the Reuters news agency. Urenco is a uranium enrichment consortium with plants in the United Kingdom, Germany, and the Netherlands.

An IAEA spokesperson said the Brazilian government was “being constructive” when it granted the agency access to Resende. He said a final decision on the deal on the arrangements for continued “inspections” would come after the agency reviews the report on the first tour of the plant.

Meanwhile, in a November 5 speech to Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei said more pressure should be brought to bear against signers of the Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty (NPT) who intend to expand electrification of their countries with the use of nuclear power. Although uranium enrichment is currently permitted under the NPT, ElBaradei said these are “latent weapons programs” that can be quickly transformed into factories for making arms-grade material. ElBaradei said the treaty should be renegotiated to give the IAEA the power to prevent governments deemed unreliable from developing the capacity to enrich uranium, according to the Associated Press.

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