VIENNA, June 11: The United States, Europe and other Western nations are urging Saudi Arabia to agree to full international nuclear inspections, despite Riyadh’s desire to sign a protocol that would severely limit investigations by the UN atomic agency, diplomats said on Saturday.

The European Union is expected this weekend to make a so-called diplomatic demarche, both in Vienna and Riyadh, asking Saudi Arabia not to a sign a protocol, to which it has the right, that would reduce the possibility of inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), European diplomats said.

Saudi Arabia, a key state in the tense Middle East, is not believed to be a direct nuclear proliferation threat, but diplomats are seeking to calm fears amid a major test of wills with Iran.

There have also been reports — denied by the Saudis — that in a crisis they could use their financial clout to get nuclear technology, or even weapons, from countries such as Pakistan.

While diplomats were all agreed that they would prefer full access to Saudi Arabia’s nuclear facilities, one non-aligned official said the deal proposed would be for the country to sign a less stringent agreement known as the Small Quantities Protocol (SQP), but also make a commitment to allowing inspections if asked to do so.

There would thus be ‘a goodwill gesture that if the IAEA requests additional access, that the Saudis would be prepared to grant it’, he said.

Saudi Arabia wants to agree to IAEA safeguard inspections, but also sign the SQP, which is designed to make inspections less burdensome in nations with small nuclear programs, at a meeting of the agency’s board of governors that opens in Vienna on Monday.

A European diplomat said the Dutch would be making the approach in the Saudi capital Riyadh on behalf of the EU, since the current EU president Luxembourg does not have an embassy there.

“The request is for Saudi Arabia to go ahead and sign a comprehensive safeguards agreement with the IAEA but not to sign the Small Quantities Protocol,” the diplomat said.

The safeguards agreement authorizes the IAEA to inspect a country’s nuclear facilities under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which brings together five nuclear-weapons states and 183 non-nuclear-weapons states.

Saudi Arabia had previously refused to sign a comprehensive safeguards agreement even though it has signed the NPT and is obliged to do so.

The concern over guaranteeing full safeguards inspections in Saudi Arabia is not so much over the Saudi nuclear program itself, but ‘because of the significance of the Saudi role in the region’, where the IAEA has for over two years been investigating Iran on US charges that Tehran is secretly developing atomic weapons, the European diplomat said.

Another diplomat close to the IAEA said the SQP, offered since 1971, was out of date in an era marked by secret nuclear programs where the bar is higher for suspicions of possible atomic activities.

The United States and other Western nations have also been lobbying with Saudi Arabia to either not sign the SQP or agree despite this protocol to allow additional IAEA inspections, diplomats said.

Developing and non-aligned nations, however, back Saudi Arabia’s right to the SQP.

A non-aligned diplomat said: “I don’t see why it should be a problem for Saudi Arabia to grant further access” once it had signed the protocol unless the Saudis felt this was a blow to their ‘prestige and credibility’.

The IAEA is urging its members to accept the deal for Saudi Arabia to sign both a comprehensive safeguard agreement and the SQP, as it wants Riyadh to meet its NPT obligations, sources close to the agency said.

Signing of the SQP is automatic if a country qualifies for it, signs the safeguards agreement and also wants the protocol.

But the IAEA said in a confidential document distributed to board members on May 6 that the SQP would ‘reduce to a minimum the safeguards procedures’.

The IAEA is currently studying the possibility of rescinding the SQP, which leaves the agency with ‘only very limited means to evaluate any potential nuclear activities’, according to the document.

The SQP allows states to be exempted from requirements to notify the IAEA of design information for certain facilities and of stocks of natural uranium of up to 10 tons.

This ‘small’ amount is still enough to make enough enriched uranium to produce at least one atom bomb. —AFP