Podcast Transcript

13 July 2006
U.S. Evaluation of Verification Concepts and Assessments of Compliance and Verification

Paula DeSutter, the Assistant Secretary of State for Verification Compliance and Implementation.

Hello, I'm Paula DeSutter, Assistant Secretary for Verification, Compliance, and Implementation. I'm here in London to attend a significant conference at King's College on how, in the event of a biological weapons attack, we could determine who the perpetrator was.

But I've also been fortunate to have visited several times over the past few years as we worked closely with our UK counterparts to assist Libya in their voluntary elimination of their WMD programs - a singular success, not just for the U.S. and the UK, but especially for Libya and the world.

I'd like to share with you three questions that challenge me in my work, but that also challenge the entire world today.

First, what do we do when countries like Iran and North Korea intentionally violate the commitments they made to abide by international non-proliferation agreements?

Secondly, especially after not finding the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that we expected to find, how can we be confident that we are correct in assessing violations and other questions of non-compliance? Here I must note that in the Iran case, we are fortunate to have IAEA reports that document the 20 years of Iranian covert activities and cheating.

Finally, how can we ensure that in future agreements we can detect noncompliance early enough to bring violators back into compliance or respond to deny them the benefits of their non-compliance? If we can't do that, we may still wish to pursue agreements, but we must be forthright about the risk of undetected cheating.

We have many agreements - bilateral and multilateral - that we have pursued to enhance security and stability. But those benefits and that approach cannot be long sustained if cheaters get away with it, or even worse, benefit from cheating.

These are questions that I and my colleagues in the U.S. are grappling with, and we will continue to work closely with the international community to find answers.

Thank you for your interest and I encourage you to visit our Verification, Compliance and Implementation webpage at http://www.state.gov where you may examine our reports on "Adherence to and Compliance with Agreements," commonly called the "Noncompliance Report," as well as other information on this subject.

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