184 



(3) The United States lacked adequate technical personnel to 

 meet all potential needs for inspection. It would be preferable to 

 avoid this drain by sharing the task with others. 



While the State Department testimony indicated that the United 

 States would probably continue to use bilateral agreements, it sug- 

 gested also that bilateral agreements should not be made a more attrac- 

 tive source of these materials than the International Agency. The 

 United States had a moral obligation to be a good member of the 

 Agency and to try not to undermine it. 112 



Chairman Stra'uss clearly favored use of bilateral agreements. The 

 United States, he testified, should not abandon these direct agreements 

 with other countries when the Agency came into existence, or at any 

 time in the foreseeable future. He anticipated that the Agency would 

 stress activities in which many nations had a direct interest and in 

 which the greatest progress could be made by a multinational ap- 

 proach. At the same time, the United States through bilateral agree- 

 ments would be able to extend to individual countries nuclear coopera- 

 tion which . . . conforms more precisely to our traditional and spe- 

 cial relationship with those particular countries." 113 He did acknowl- 

 edge possibilities of some resistance to bilateral agreements. Some 

 countries, he said, had not responded to U.S. overtures to enter into 

 bilateral agreements with them. However, these nations had shown 

 their willingness to accept from an international agency limitations 

 on their sovereignty unacceptable from the United States. 114 



A Bilateral Agreement With the IAEA and Three Policy Question* 

 As authorized by the IAEA Participation Act, the AEC began to 

 negotiate a bilateral agreement with the International Agency. The 

 negotiations took almost 2 years. An agreement for cooperation was 

 finally signed at Vienna on May 11, 1959, and entered into force on 

 August 7, 1959. 



During the negotiations IAEA became aware that it had no major 

 role in the development of nuclear power. Its first Director General. 

 W. Sterling Cole, who had resigned from his post as Chairman of the 

 Joint Committee on Atomic Energy to take this post, strove to carve 

 out roles for the Agency as a channel for atomic energy aid. and as a 

 proponent of international safety codes and standards and interna- 

 tional controls for nuclear fuel materials. When the United States did 

 not respond to his vision of a strong International Agency, he became 

 a strong critic of U.S. policy toward the Agency. 



One example of Mr. Cole's ideas serves to illustrate the gap between 

 expectations and performance for IAEA. On March 9, 1959, before a 

 conference of the American Association for the United Nations, Direc- 

 tor General Cole asked three questions of policy which indicated both 

 his vision of what the Agency should Ik>, and the shortfall from his 

 hopes. He asked : 115 



Shall tlif atomic energy contribution of the technologically advanced and ma- 

 terially endowed nations to other countries in the world be given and applied 

 through truly International channels; or shall we continue to channel such aid 



"- Ibid., p. 165. 



»» Ibid., p. 86. 



"* Ibid., i». 116. 



118 Quoted l>y Senator Clinton Anderson, Jn U.S. Oonpross, Joint Committee on Atomic 

 Energy, Hearings, Agreement for Cooperation Between th<- united states and the Inter- 

 national Mnmic Energy Agency, 86th Cong., 1st Sess., 1959, pp. 8-10. 



