This morning, Argentine Foreign Minister Héctor Timerman held a meeting with IAEA Director General, Ykiya Amano at the International Atomic Energy Agency Headquarters in Vienna. During his first visit to the agency, Minister Timerman expressed our country’s support to IAEA’s work, both related to cooperation matters for the peaceful use of nuclear energy and to nonproliferation, stressing the fact that Argentina shares the vision of the importance assigned to nuclear energy development in a safe and peaceful way.
In turn, Amano congratulated Argentina for the recent announcement of the joint construction with Brazil of two research reactors, that will be similar to the OPAL, the reactor designed and built by INVAP for the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Agency (ANSTO), inaugurated in April, 2007.
Furthermore, he stressed Argentina’s high technological development and innovative capacity. Amano highlighted that these capacities allow our country to make fundamental contributions to the IAEA due to their regional influence.
On his hand, Timerman emphasized the status and development of the national nuclear plan and particularly stressed the strategic role of the ABACC (Brazilian-Argentine Agency for the Accounting and Control of Nuclear Materials), an irreplaceable element in the trust and safety scheme between Argentina and Brazil. Timerman invited Mr. Amano to chair a Seminar that will be held this year in view of ABACC’s 20th Anniversary.
The Argentine Foreign Minister stressed the importance of expanding the benefits of nuclear energy and pointed out that the mechanisms to strengthen nuclear nonproliferation, including the creation of nuclear fuel banks, should take into account regional criteria.
IAEA, with more than 140 member states, aims to accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy to peace, health and prosperity throughout the world, and plays a fundamental role in promoting the peaceful use of nuclear energy and safeguarding nuclear materials as part of the international system of nuclear nonproliferation. Argentina has been fully engaged with the Agency’s activities, since its creation in 1957, and particularly with the goal that benefits from the peaceful use of nuclear energy will contribute to improve pe
