– but not full – visual access to the centrifuges and other industrial equipment. Another source of conflict has been Brazil's refusal to sign the Additional Protocol (AP), a voluntary legal instrument that complements comprehensive safeguards agreements and provides the IAEA broader rights of access to sites. Despite the pressures coming from the IAEA and some nuclear weapon states that consider the AP a fundamental instrument of the verification regime, Brazil has strongly opposed it. In the past few years, there have been discussions within the NSG about the establishment of the AP as a requirement to export items related to sensitive nuclear fuel cycle activities. In 2011, NSG members came to an agreement on this issue, recognizing the Quadripartite Agreement between Brazil, Argentina and the IAEA as a temporary alternative to the AP. A Brazilian bomb While Brazil was conducting its nuclear activities outside of the nuclear non-proliferation regime, many in the international community doubted its stated peaceful intention. In addition to Brazil's refusal to sign the NPT, the fact that the country was ruled by a hard-line military regime fuelled the suspicion that Brasília was pursuing a nuclear bomb. This opinion was manifested openly and implicitly by different nations as well as the international anti-nuclear movement. The most vehement of skeptics was the U.S., with countries like France, Canada, the UK and the Soviet Union also following suit in their doubts of Brazil. Domestically, the lack of transparency in the Brazilian government and the little information made available about the nuclear program also led some people to believe that the military government would move forward with weaponization. Environmentalists, peace activists and members of the political opposition voiced their condemnation to the idea. The suspicion intensified in the second half of the 1980s. As domestic media reports were published, uncovering secret nuclear developments, rumors about a possible Brazilian nuclear test emerged. One of the main Brazilian newspapers, Folha de S. Paulo, published an interview in April 1985 with a retired military officer who stated that the government planned to develop a nuclear device and explode it in 1990. During that same period, international papers denounced covert nuclear activities in Brazil, which reignited external questioning of its nuclear aspirations. Eric Ehrmann and Christopher Barton discussed Brazil's nuclear cooperation with Iraq in 1992, and noted the views of CIA Director Robert Gates to wit that Brazil has the capability to sell