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All RSS Feeds US Drops Opposition to IAEA Chief By Dafna Linzer Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, June 8, 2005; Page A13 The Bush administration, having found no alternate candidate or support f rom any allies, has given up on its attempt to force out Mohamed ElBarad ei as director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, accord ing to two US officials. With ElBaradei's bid for a third term virtually guaranteed when the agenc y's board meets next week, the White House decided to invite him to Wash ington for a talk tomorrow with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice abou t the terms of US support, the officials said.
Mohamed ElBaradei, seeking a third term as head of the IAEA, is sched uled to meet tomorrow with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Mohamed ElBaradei, seeking a third term as head of the IAEA, is scheduled to meet tomorrow with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Sign Up Now "We're willing to lift our objections under certain conditions," one of t he officials said. The Bush administration's vigorous but solitary campaign -- including a c omplete halt of intelligence sharing, recruitment of potential replaceme nts and eavesdropping on ElBaradei in search of ammunition against him - - won not a single ally on the IAEA board. ElBaradei, who repeatedly challenged US assertions about Iraq's weapons programs, does not need Washington's backing to be reappointed. He is s upported by the 34 other countries on the IAEA board. But Washington's blessing will give ElBaradei additional muscle and could bolster agency investigations of nuclear programs in countries such as Iran. The United States stopped sharing intelligence with the IAEA six m onths ago when it began efforts to replace ElBaradei. But with the leade rship issue nearly resolved, US officials predicted the intelligence r elationship would resume. The IAEA relies heavily on countries to provid e information that could help them uncover clandestine nuclear programs. ElBaradei, an Egyptian diplomat and international lawyer who turns 63 thi s month, arrives late today and will meet tomorrow with Rice and Robert Joseph, who replaced John R Bolton last week as undersecretary of state for arms control. Bolton was the driving force behind efforts to oust ElBaradei -- whose st ance on Iraq and cautious approach on Iran put him deeply at odds with t he White House. But Bolton's efforts ran into trouble in December after revelations that US officials were culling intercepts of ElBaradei's p hone conversations for material to use against him. ElBaradei's office had no comment on the invitation to Washington, issued Friday. The State Department would not comment on whether the United St ates has decided to support him, but spokesman Kurtis Cooper said he "wo uldn't be surprised if the issue came up." He said Rice planned to discu ss several items on the agenda for the IAEA board meeting on Monday in V ienna. At talks last week in London, European officials implored their US coun terparts to resolve the issue and back ElBaradei, arguing that the conti nued stance against him was causing unnecessary friction at a time when unity was needed in dealing with Iran, according to the US officials a nd a senior European diplomat. The two US officials, who would discuss the issue only on the condition of anonymity, said Rice decided afterward to invite ElBaradei to the St ate Department and officially offer US support for his candidacy. But she also wants to make it clear that the White House expects several thi ngs in return. "He is going to win either way, and if we went in opposing him, it would be ugly for us and for him," one official said. "So it's in everyone's i nterest to use the opportunity to work better together." Specifically, the administration wants ElBaradei to be more publicly skep tical on Iran. In the past two years, his inspectors have uncovered a la rge-scale nuclear program the Iranians built in secret over 18 years. Iran says the program was set up to produce fuel for nuclear power, and E lBaradei has said repeatedly there is no proof to contradict Iran's stor y The administration has rejected those findings and believes that ElBa radei's comments have hurt its campaign to ratchet up international pres sure against Iran. Publicly, the administration has said its efforts to remove ElBaradei wer e motivated solely by a desire to see UN executives adopt term limits. "Our feeling on the director general is that we support the long-standi ng policy of two terms for director generals," Bolton told the Senate Fo reign Relations Committee in April when it was reviewing his nomination to be ambassador to the United Nations. Current ly, there are no candidates to oppose him, so we'll have to see how that policy plays out," he said. But many allies viewed the campaign as retaliation against someone who qu estioned US intelligence on Iraq and was vindicated when no weapons of mass destruction were found. Larry Wilkerson, who was chief of staff for Secretary of State Colin L P owell, told the foreign relations committee that Bolton was out of bound s in his efforts against ElBaradei. Wilkerson said Bolton went "out of h is way to bad-mouth him, to make sure that everybody knew that the maxim um power of the United States would be brought to bear against them if h e were brought back in."
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