24 Nations Endorse Diluted Nuclear Safety Pact : Energy: Accord reached at meeting of U.N. watchdog agency is stripped of enforcement provisions. Still, it wins praise as a first step.

At least two dozen nations endorsed an international convention on nuclear safety here Tuesday, but only after the accord was so watered down in the search for consensus that it contains virtually no means of enforcement.

Efforts to deter smuggling of nuclear materials also have run afoul of political and economic sensitivities at the annual general conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is expected to deflect the volatile trafficking issue to a panel of experts.

Like other international bodies navigating the turbulent political waters of the post-Cold War era, the nuclear watchdog of the United Nations has had to scale down objectives to guarantee broad-based agreement.

Russia and Bulgaria--home to some of the world’s most hazardous nuclear plants--were among the first countries to endorse the convention brokered by the IAEA and committing signatories to general principles of reactor safety and periodic performance reviews.

But the accord, originally aimed at extending Western safety practices to the aging and potentially dangerous reactors in the emerging democracies of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, was stripped in negotiations of any provisions giving the agency real power to inspect or close down substandard reactors.

It relies on a “peer review process” to assess the performance of participating countries on the basis of their own written evaluations.

Nevertheless, the accord won praise as the first step toward creating an international safety umbrella.

“It is the first legal instrument to address directly the issue of safety of nuclear installations worldwide,” said IAEA Director Hans Blix.

U.S. Energy Secretary Hazel O’Leary noted that only five years ago, the concept of outside evaluations would not have gained general approval because of the mistrust that pervaded the world.

O’Leary acknowledged a need for Western consideration of the economic and social consequences that would result from forced shutdowns at reactors widely regarded as unsafe.

The six-reactor facility at Kozloduy, in Bulgaria, provides up to 40% of national electricity and employs 5,000 in an economically devastated country.

Ukraine, home of the Chernobyl plant that in 1986 was the scene of the world’s worst nuclear disaster, has not signed the convention but has indicated to IAEA officials that it intends to do so.

Following the seizure in Germany of four separate caches of smuggled plutonium and highly enriched uranium since May, Western nations have used the IAEA forum to press for more effective controls on the components of nuclear weapons.

German authorities suspect that the materials they have seized from illegal traffickers came from poorly guarded facilities in the former Soviet Union. A German deputy minister for research and technology, Gebhard Ziller, appealed to the IAEA for urgent action to curb the black-market trade.

But that focus on Russia and Ukraine has ruffled political feathers at the IAEA, prompting O’Leary and Russian Atomic Energy Minister Viktor Mikhailov to play down the risks and diffuse the responsibility for smuggling incidents.

“It has to be said there has been much speculation on this score, which at times is insulting to the Russian people,” Mikhailov said of accusations he described as “provocation.”

O’Leary suggested Monday that the international public had been unduly alarmed by “almost hysterical reporting” of the small-quantity trafficking arrests, but she conceded a day later that the nuclear agency should play a lead role in “policing and surveillance.”

While the IAEA has no police powers, it has experience tracking nuclear material sources from its role as monitor of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Blix has proposed convening an international commission to examine control procedures at nuclear material sources and recommend ways in which they could be strengthened.

For the first time in three years, the IAEA general conference has been dominated by an issue other than North Korean intransigence on opening its nuclear plant doors to foreign inspection.

The international standoff with North Korea persists, however, as Pyongyang stands accused of concealing stores of plutonium and barring international inspectors from two facilities thought to be engaged in production of nuclear weapons.

Washington is negotiating with North Korea to gain access to the suspected weapons plants. A fresh round of talks is set for Friday in Geneva.

North Korea withdrew from the IAEA in June after the agency denounced the hard-line Communist country for violating safety and inspection agreements.