Memorandum, Hungarian Foreign Ministry

The socialist countries' fraternal coordinating meeting in regard to the 19th general conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency (henceforth IAEA) was held on 18-22 August 1975, at the invitation of the Polish Foreign Ministry.

The following states participated in the coordinating meeting: Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Hungary, Mongolia, Poland, German Democratic Republic, the Soviet Union, Ukraine, Belorussia, Romania, and the representative of the COMECON [Council for Mutual Economic Assistance] Secretariat.

[…]

In the course of the coordinating meeting, the fraternal delegations reached an agreement about the following [several items on the conference's agenda, such as items number 7, 8, 9, and 12, were not discussed at the meeting]:

1) They agreed that they would express their protest if a Chilean, Israeli, or South Korean citizen was proposed for any of the posts of vice-chairmen of the of the socialist countries, they would support the nomination of Poland, the Soviet Union, and Czechoslovakia.

[…]

6) During the discussion of the annual report, the Soviet delegate said that in the speech he was to make at the general assembly, he would analyze in detail

- the results of the Geneva conference [and]
- the Helsinki declaration,

for the duties of the IAEA had increased as a consequence of the aforesaid [conferences], and these [conferences] played a very substantial role in world politics.

The Soviet delegate would go into the issue of making the IAEA safeguards system more effective. Namely, it should be applied to nuclear equipment, materials, and technologies alike. This would mean that the states that had not joined the Non-Proliferation Treaty (henceforth NPT) would not get technological equipment and nuclear materials unless they subordinated their nuclear activity to the IAEA safeguards system.

They would do their best to prevent the IAEA from assisting Chile, South Korea, and Israel. He asked for a firm attitude with regard to the issue of technical assistance, namely, that it should be made available only to those countries that had signed the NPT, for otherwise the operation of the safeguards system would become ineffective.

The bilateral agreements, such as the one signed by the FRG [Federal Republic of Germany] and Brazil, or the one signed by France and South Korea, had created an alarming situation, for in this way certain countries that remained outside the NPT could also obtain the full cycle of nuclear technology. One should achieve the result that complete nuclear technology be held by regional centers [rather than by individual countries], Comrade Arkadiev said.

The participants in the coordinating meeting found the budget too high. The Romanian and Korean delegates declared that they did not support the proposed increase.

[…]

10) The Soviet Union, Poland, Hungary, and Bulgaria announced that they would increase their financial contribution.

11) The delegates discussed the cooperation between COMECON and the IAEA, in which the DPRK, the DRV, and Yugoslavia also participated, and evaluated it positively. […]

14) The session also dealt with the election of new members of the governing council. The mandates of Bulgaria and Hungary would expire this year, and Poland and Yugoslavia would be nominated for their places. The Soviet delegate went into the issue of admitting the countries of the Far East into the governing council. He pointed out that hitherto the Philippines had had a so-called “floating” status, but now it applied for the place vacated by South Korea, without coordinating [its action] with the region. On the other hand, Mongolia, Kampuchea, and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea had not yet been members of the governing council. Of the latter, the Soviet representative proposed the DPRK, rather than the Philippines. However, the representative of the DPRK announced – after a consultation – that he did not aspire to membership in the governing council. He explained this by the fact that France had signed a nuclear agreement with South Korea, which, he declared, was dangerous for the DPRK.

[…]

Gyula Szombathelyi
[section head of the Major Department of International Organizations of the Foreign Ministry]