New nuclear boss

In his 12 years as IAEA director general, Mohamed ElBaradei became well acquainted with criticism. Iran, for instance, repeatedly accused the United Nations' nuclear monitoring organization of playing favorites and representing Western interests, while the US and Israel constantly expressed displeasure at the IAEA's failure to get Tehran to live up to its promises.

But whatever ElBaradei's shortcomings, experts agree that the Egyptian lawyer did succeed in enhancing the standing of his organization and to an extent in balancing the demands of objectivity and politics.

"The head of the IAEA is always in a difficult situation," Henning Riecke, a program director at the German Society for Foreign Policy in Berlin, told Deutsche Welle. "IAEA reports are based both on inspections and on information provided by intelligence services, for example the American intelligence service. At the same time the agency has to try to be neutral. ElBaradei's tenure was generally positive. He raised the public profile of the agency, drew attention to the topic of nuclear non-proliferation and did issue some very critical reports indeed about Iran."

Annette Schaper, a scholar at the Frankfurt Peace Research Institute, goes even further in her praise.

"ElBaradei achieved great things," Schaper told Deutsche Welle. "He gave the IAEA a profile of its own and made it into an internationally recognized authority. He truly deserved the Nobel Peace Prize."

ElBaradei and the IAEA were jointly honored with that award in 2005. And that's one standard against which his successor, Yukiya Amano, will be measured.

A shift in emphasis

Experts consider Amano, a 62-year-old Japanese diplomat and international civil servant, as something of an unknown quantity and a blank slate.

He has been described as being a more reticent personality than ElBaradei. But those who've worked with and within the IAEA also praise his technical expertise, leadership qualities and commitment to containing the threat of misused nuclear technology.

In campaigning for the top IAEA job earlier this year, Amano recalled Japanese history.

"I will stand firm against the spread of nuclear weapons," the diplomat told the IAEA Board of Governors last March. "As I come from a country that has the experience of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I am deeply convinced that a nuclear catastrophe should never be repeated."

But he also admitted that his previous experience had more to do with nuclear disarmament than nuclear non-proliferation. And the fact that he comes from Japan brings with it potential dilemmas as well as a personal commitment.

"On the one hand, Japan is a strong supporter of non-proliferation, being the only country against which atomic weapons have been used," Riecke said. "On the other, many fear that this highly industrialized country could turn toward the bomb if China and North Korea create a rising nuclear threat, or the nuclear umbrella provided by the United States loses credibility."

The North Korean government expelled IAEA inspectors from the country last April and Japan is currently involved in six-nation talks aimed at persuading Pyongyang to change its policy.

By contrast, Amano is far more distant than his predecessor from the other main and perhaps even more important issue the IAEA would like to resolve - Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Tehran turnaround unlikely

Iran has been playing a cat-and-mouse game with the IAEA for years. Tehran has sent signals that it may be willing to provide more transparency regarding its nuclear program. But nearly in the same breath, it also insists that it will abide by no restrictions from the international community.

The revelation of a previous secret nuclear enrichment near the Iranian city of Qom this September did little to enhance Tehran's credibility. Last week, ElBaradei himself said the IAEA's efforts with respect to Iran had reached a "dead end."

Experts say Amano will hardly be able to solve the impasse.

"The Iranian nuclear program is something of a national mission," Riecke said. "Iran is like India in that they want to have the ability to produce nuclear weapons quickly, if they so choose. There's no reason to think they'll be more cooperative. Instead they'd like to gain control over the entire nuclear cycle."

But others note that the international community should see the IAEA for what it is, a monitoring organization and not necessarily a forum for resolving issues of who should and shouldn't have nuclear weapons.

They also say that attempts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons must be coupled with progress by bigger nations on commitments to reduce the numbers of existing nuclear arms.

"That is clearly laid out in Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty," Schaper told Deutsche Welle. "It undermines one's credibility on the issue of non-proliferation, if nothing is done about disarmament."

The IAEA under Amano still has a role to play in this process. But it would be overly optimistic, perhaps even foolish, to expect that the new general director will able to easily eradicate the problems that so confounded his prominent predecessor.

Author: Jefferson Chase
Editor: Rob Mudge