IAEA chooses Japanese as new head: diplomats

The decision by the 35-nation International Atomic Energy Agency board ended a tug of war on who should succeed Nobel Peace laureate Mohamed ElBaradei, who saw his agency vaulted into prominence during a high-profile 12-year tenure.

North Korea left the nonproliferation fold to develop a nuclear weapons program on ElBaradei's watch and his agency later launched inconclusive probes on suspicions that those to nations were interested in developing nuclear weapons.

ElBaradei's activist approach to his job often rankled with Washington — and it had a strong preference for Amano, seen by the U.S. as a technocrat amenable to pursuing a hard line on Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Amano's allusions to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki pointed to a deep commitment to non-proliferation. And Japan, which is separated from North Korea only by a narrow body of water, keenly shares the United States' concerns about Pyongyang's nuclear program.

Developing countries supported Amano's rival, South Africa's Abdul Samad Minty, considered ready to challenge the U.S. and other nuclear power countries on issues such as disarmament — and which are generally supportive of Iran's claims to having a right to nuclear power.

An initial session in March ended inconclusively and Thursday's meeting went down to the wire, with Amano winning only in the fourth round.

That and the fact that Amano barely eked out his victory, just clearing the two-thirds majority needed, reflected a continuing divide between the two camps. The divisions have served as an obstacle in one of its key tasks — probing nations suspected of secret, possibly weapons-related, nuclear activities.

While Amano was born after the U.S. nuclear strikes that ravaged Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, he alluded to those events in brief comments to reporters, suggesting that as a "national coming from Japan" he would work particularly hard to reduce the threat from atomic arms.

Expanding on that theme in recent comments to the Austrian daily, Die Presse, he said that he was "resolute in opposing the spread of nuclear arms because I am from a country that experienced Hiroshima and Nagasaki."

Now his country's chief delegate to the IAEA, Amano was previously his country's senior official for disarmament and related issues. He has also chaired key IAEA meetings during his more than three-year tenure as chief IAEA delegate.

He still needs to be confirmed by the board, in a session planned for Friday, and in September by the full IAEA general assembly. IAEA officials suggested both meetings would rubber-stamp the choice of Amano, saying it would be unheard of for them to overturn Thursday's vote results.

Amano collected 23 votes, to 11 for Minty — just giving him the two-thirds majority needed for victory.

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