IAEA chooses Japanese as new head: diplomats

Saying he would do his utmost to prevent nuclear proliferation, Amano, 62, appealed for "solidarity of all the member states — countries from North, from South, from East and West" to achieve that goal.

Amano will be taking control of the IAEA at a particularly difficult time. Its nuclear investigations of Iran and Syria are both deadlocked, and it has no overview at all of North Korea, which is forging ahead with its nuclear arms program.

The Iranian investigation in particular has been affected by the deep divide between Western nations, including the United States, and developing countries that accuse the West of being indifferent to the problems of poorer countries.

Iran is under three sets of U.N. Security Council sanctions for refusing to freeze its uranium enrichment program — an activity that Tehran insists is meant to generate nuclear fuel but which can also be used to produce fissile material for nuclear warheads.

Representatives of some developing nations have privately said they share Western fears that Iran may seek to use enrichment to develop weapons. But as a bloc, they tend to support Iran's argument that it has a right to an enrichment program for generating energy.

The developing bloc also questions the West's assertions that Iran in the past ran experiments and drew up plans reflecting its interest in nuclear weapons, backing Tehran's dismissal of U.S. and other intelligence pointing to such activities.

Israel compounds the acrimony, with developing nations supporting Islamic countries critical of the West for focusing on Iran and Syria while ignoring what they say is the Jewish state's undeclared nuclear weapons capability.

ElBaradei steps down in November and the U.S. and its backers had backed Amano as a man sympathetic to their focus — nonproliferation. Minty, in contrast, was generally seen as ready to give more weight to demands by the developing countries pushing the U.S. and other nuclear weapons states to disarm.

The West had viewed Elbaradei as sometimes challenging its arguments and concerns, and for being too soft on Iran. In 2005, Washington tried unsuccessfully to block the Egyptian's appointment to another four-year term.

Without publicly saying so, the U.S. and its allies had made clear before Tuesday's voting that they favored Amano because they saw him as someone who would manage the IAEA without thrusting himself into the political fray.

John Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under the previous administration, hailed Amano's victory in comments indirectly critical of Elbaradei.

"I think he will reduce the politicization of the IAEA," he said. "That alone will bring back things into equilibrium."

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