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Recent revelations by the Washington Post of a United States plan to unseat the International Atomic Energy Agency’s chief Mohamed ElBaradei have thrown a new name into the ring with Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer emerging as the American’s preferred candidate to challenge the incumbent for the job as director-general of the UN’s nuclear watchdog organization.

 

The 62 year-old popular Egyptian diplomat has incurred the wrath of senior Bush officials, partly because of US frustration over the “softly, softly” approach taken by the IAEA with Tehran over the Iran nuclear weapons issue, but also because of open disagreement over the existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

 

After ElBaradei challenged the evidence given by the Secretary of State Colin Powell to the United Nations in his now-infamous presentation on 5 February 2003, administration hardliners led by noted Vice-President Dick Cheney and Under Secretary of State for Disarmament John Bolton have openly canvassed for ElBaradei’s removal, even to the extent, according to the Post, of bugging his phone calls in an a bid to gather incriminating evidence in the IAEA chief’s recent dealings with Tehran over the monitoring of their nuclear weapons program.

 

Bush officials suspect ElBaradei of “turning a blind eye” to Tehran’s clandestine nuclear weapons and, while the administration has failed to provide any evidence of wrongdoing on the part of ElBaradei, this has not slowed them in their efforts to remove him as the long serving chief of the UN’s pre-eminent nuclear supervisory committee.

US State department spokesman Richard Boucher has refused to comment on the Washington Post’s allegations that Mr ElBaradei’s phone was bugged by US intelligence agencies though went on to state the administration’s belief that no senior official at the United Nations should hold office for more than two terms.

 

Observers see replacing ElBaradei with a more compliant chief such as Downer as bringing the IAEA more into line with the Bush Administration’s hardline thinking on the issue of nuclear non-proliferation. The question is where does Downer fit into this grand plan?