Kerry Spot    [ jim geraghty reporting ]
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Well, isn’t this interesting?

Agence France Presse, Sep 27, 2004:

A new board of governors of the UN nuclear watchdog met in Vienna Monday to draw up procedures for electing a new director general, with current chief Mohamed ElBaradei seeking a third term despite US opposition.

ElBaradei put his hat into the ring for a third term as director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) earlier this month despite opposition from the United States and possibly other top UN funding states.

His current four-year term expires on November 30 next year, and US officials have said the United States, the largest contributor to the United Nations, supports the position of the Geneva group of top 10 contributors that heads of international organizations should not serve more than two terms.

"This policy has nothing to do with the director general's qualifications. The United States thinks that he's done a very good job leading the agency at a very difficult time, but it's simply a matter of principle and good governance," a Western official familiar with the US position said...

Applications for candidacies will close by December 31 and the board will seek to have the new director general named by a meeting in June 2005, in order to be formally elected at the next IAEA general conference in September

The director's general's new term would begin on December 1, 2005.

(ElBaradei has had this job since 1997 — hey, wasn’t that a year before India and Pakistan announced they had the bomb? And since then we’ve seen North Korea dishonor its treaties and get nukes, the A.Q. Khan network try to sell nuclear material to any and all buyers, and Iran is on the nuclear doorstep. This is a “very good job”? How bad do you have to be to get fired around here? What is this, “Mary Mapes rules”?)

Anyway, so in late September, the United States makes clear it doesn’t want a third term for ElBaradei. We read in the New York Times story that started all this:

“In May, an internal I.A.E.A. memorandum warned that terrorists might be helping "themselves to the greatest explosives bonanza in history…

Early this month, Dr. ElBaradei put public pressure on the interim Iraqi government to start the process of accounting for nuclear-related materials still ostensibly under I.A.E.A. supervision, including the Qaqaa stockpile.

"Iraq is obliged," he wrote to the president of the Security Council on Oct. 1, "to declare semiannually changes that have occurred or are foreseen."

The agency, Dr. ElBaradei added pointedly, "has received no such notifications or declarations from any state since the agency's inspectors were withdrawn from Iraq in March 2003."

Gee! In late September the U.S. says no third term for ElBaradei, and Oct. 1 he writes to Iraq demanding answers about this old weapons depot!

Then, in a memo that appears to be dated Oct. 10, the Iraqis respond that the explosives are missing… and it just happens to show up on the front page of the New York Times eight days before Election Day. An article that quotes a European diplomat as saying “Dr. ElBaradei is "extremely concerned" about the potentially "devastating consequences" of the vanished stockpile.”

I’ll bet he is! He’s so concerned, he felt a need to make this issue that he’s been quiet about since spring 2003 and press the Iraqi government for an immediate answer that he knows will make the Bush administration look bad!

One has to wonder - has John Kerry or a member of his staff indicated they would keep ElBaradei around for another term? We know ElBaradei wants a change in U.S. policy on his third term.

ElBaradei is doing everything he can to help Kerry. What’s in it for ElBaradei?

[Posted 10/26 03:04 PM]