Yukiya Amano, a disarmament negotiator, faces immediate tests from a defiant Iran and provocative North Korea as he takes over the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) yesterday from Nobel laureate Mohamed ElBaradei.
Amano, 62, handled nuclear proliferation issues for Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs for three decades. He joined the IAEA’s 35-member board of governors in September 2005 and was elected the agency’s director general in July.
Amano assumes his post two days after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Cabinet ordered Iran’s nuclear agency to begin building 10 uranium enrichment sites within two months, the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported. Iran says the fuel is for civilian use while the US claims it is for weapons development.
“Iran seems to be saying its last ‘goodbye’ to ElBaradei and saying ‘hello’ to Amano,” said Takehiko Yamamoto, a professor of international relations at Waseda University in Tokyo. “There’s a tough road ahead of Amano, with his first and major task being to beef up the agency’s inspections of Iran’s nuclear sites and shoot down the country’s ambitious nuclear armament plans.”
The IRNA report came a day after the UN agency censured Iran for concealing the existence of an enrichment plant built into the side of a mountain. The IAEA board demanded that Iran suspend construction of the almost-completed Fordo plant.
Iran already faces three sets of UN Security Council resolutions over its nuclear program. ElBaradei, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, said on Friday that the agency had reached a “dead end” in its six-year investigation into whether Iran is concealing a nuclear weapons program.
Amano resigned from the Japanese Foreign Ministry on Nov. 13, said a ministry official who declined to be named. His appointment comes as the IAEA tries to balance the growing demand for nuclear reactors against the spread of weapons technologies through the network of Pakistan’s Abdul Qadeer Khan. The former head of Pakistan’s nuclear and missile programs was placed under house arrest in 2004 after confessing to running a network that sold machinery for making bomb-grade uranium to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
IAEA inspectors were kicked out of North Korea on April 16, a month before that nation tested a nuclear device. The Security Council in June imposed more sanctions, including restricting financial transactions.
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