177 



by a Director General. The General Conference includes representa- 

 tives of all member states. The Board of Governors consists of 25 mem- 

 bers designated by the outgoing board or elected by the General 

 Conference. 92 



Regular expenses of the Agency are met out of assessed contributions 

 of member states. The revised regular budget for 1972 rose to 

 $16,561,000. There are also voluntary contributions from members to 

 finance IAEA technical assistance. In 1972 these pledges totalled 

 $3,375,000. The United States furnishes about 36 percent of the 

 voluntary f imds. 



Changing Goals and Situations 



President Eisenhower's plan to reduce the international threat of 

 nuclear weapons would divert nuclear explosive materials to an inter- 

 national pool of materials to be used for peaceful purposes, and would 

 create an international agency to maintain custody of that pool and 

 to enforce a credible system of safeguards. This dramatic and innova- 

 tive concept of nuclear disarmament did not long survive. One observer, 

 Harold L. Nieberg, says the Atoms for Peace initiative quickly became 

 transformed into a means of enlisting the support of the U.S.S.R. 

 to dissuade other nations from manufacturing their own nuclear 

 materials while imposing upon them (but not upon the two principals) 

 a system of international inspection and control over nuclear power. 93 



During the 3% years of diplomatic and legislative effort that went 

 into creating IAEA, commercial interest in nuclear power declined as 

 nations realized it was not a quick and easy way to supply energy to 

 Europe, and the hope of diverting substantial quantities of nuclear 

 materials from military to peaceful uses evaporated. Nonetheless in 

 1957 AEC Chairman Lewis Strauss told the Senate Committee on 

 Foreign Relations that had the President not proposed the Inter- 

 national Agency, we "should be at pains now to invent it." The follow- 

 ing excerpt of his testimony summarized the changes which had so 

 diminished the prospects for the IAEA. He said : 94 



What has changed in 3 x /2 years is that there has been indefinable improve- 

 ment in outlook, a revival of hope for a future in which an atomic cataclysm 

 need not be inevitable. That change began with the announcement of the plans 

 for this Agency. It is built upon the expectation that the Agency will come into 

 being. The still-birth of the Agency can plunge the world back into darkness. 



There is another change that has come about in the same period. In 19.".°, 

 uranium was still a rare commodity. A few nations controlled practically all 

 there was of it, so far as we then knew. Discoveries of large new deposits have 

 demonstrated that uranium is far more plentiful and more widely distributed 

 than we ever imagined. 



This availability of fissionable material and the extraordinary progress i'i 

 engineering for power development has brought other nations besides the 

 United Kingdom, Soviet Russia and ourselves into the atomic power situation 

 and will continue to do so. 



As a result of this, I would submit that, had the President never proposed the 

 International Agency, we should be at pains now to invent it. Let me be spe- 

 cific. With time the operation of atomic reactors all over the world is inevitable. 

 It can no more be prevented than one could restrict or prohibit the use of fire. 



82 In 1972 an amendment was proposed to the charter to increase the number on the 

 Board of Governors to 33. The amendment was awaiting ratification at the time of 

 writing. 



93 Harold I,. Xifherjr. Nuclear Seereeu and Foreign Pollen (Washington, D.C : The Public 

 Affairs Press, 1964). p. 19. 



61 U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations and Senate Members of the 

 Joint Committee on Atomic Enercry, Hearings, Statute of the International Atomic Energy 

 Agency, 85th Cong., 1st Sess., 1957, p. 84. 



