Madame Chair,

       My delegation congratulates you warmly on your appointment as chairperson of the advisory committee on safeguards and verification. We are confident that with your vast diplomatic experience you will lead the committee to make progress in accordance with the mandate entrusted to it by the board. My delegation assures you of its full cooperation.

        We welcome the consensus decision of the June board to set up this committee and will participate in its work constructively to contribute to strengthening the agency's safeguards system. Here, we'd like to make some observations and suggestions on relevant issues and the short-term work of the committee:

        1. The function of the committee is to recommend to the board safeguards strengthening methods and measures for consideration and policy-making. The committee should conduct its work within the framework of the IAEA statute and relevant international law and handle its relations with the existing mechanisms such as the board, the secretariat and SAGSI, among others, in a way that will not affect the effective functioning of these mechanisms.

        2. The secretariat, responsible for safeguards implementation, has accumulated a wealth of experience in the process of safeguards implementation and knowledge about the problems and weaknesses of the existing safeguards system. We expect the secretariat to provide in due course background information and advice to the committee. We also encourage the secretariat to provide the committee with necessary technical support.

        3. Regarding the committee's working procedures, it is our view the committee should follow the board's rules of procedure while carrying forward the spirit of Vienna to enable all member states equal participation in the committee's work and make recommendations to the board on relevant issues on the basis of consensus.

        4. On the schedule of future meetings, we favour a reasonable frequency of meetings under the principle of seeking truth from facts and based on realities in most member states to avoid overburdening member states; at the same time, documents to be discussed should be distributed in time and necessary consultations held prior to each meeting to improve efficiency.

        5. On the way forward, the ideas presented by the DG in his introductory statement to the June board merit careful consideration. In addition, we suggest the following for consideration:

              a. discussion on promoting the universal implementation of the existing legal authority of the agency, particularly the universal signing, ratification and implementation of CSAs and APs;

              b. discussion on ways and means to help countries with SQPs implement modified SQPs; and

              c. discussion of annexes to the APs, and depending on how things go consideration of recommending necessary revisions.

        In short, we are of the view that issues to be discussed by the committee should be prioritized, proceed from easy to difficult and yield fruits and practical results.

        Thank you, madame chair.