I quote this language because it was carefully drafted wording used for our report to the General Conference indicating our generally satisfactory findings but also indicating the difficulty, indeed impossibility, of giving categorical statements in this complex area of verification. This was the first occasion on which a State which had developed weapons had chosen to terminate its weapons programme. The invitation to the IAEA to verify that termination and the offer of full access to any location or facility associated with the former programme was vital to the fulfilment of the Agency's obligations and to the outcome I have described. For the future, the Agency would like to make use of the standing invitation extended earlier by the South African Government to grant the Agency full access to any location or facility associated with the former nuclear weapon programme and to consider requests for access to other facilities which the Agency deems pertinent to the implementation of comprehensive safeguards in South Africa. The Government of South Africa has helped demonstrate that the purpose of safeguards inspection is to create confidence that nuclear material and installations are being used only for peaceful purposes - and to uncover the opposite should it occur.
Safeguards are a form of institutionalized nuclear transparency.
Of course, nothing prevents a State from going even further in transparency than the current comprehensive safeguards system requires. Indeed, there may be particular advantage in doing so where the state concerned perceives it of benefit to demonstrate even greater transparency designed to generate even further confidence on the part of others. Today's presentation of a ploughshare crafted from non-nuclear material cut from one of its former nuclear devices is symbolic, above all of the way in which weapons of war can be transformed into the tools of peace. South Africa is entering a new era which deserves, and I am sure will receive, all possible support from the international community. At the same time South Africa will have the capacity substantially to contribute to further uses of nuclear energy on the African continent.