VIENNA, Dec 13: Allegations that the United States had access to wiretaps on the telephone of the head of the UN nuclear watchdog have damaged Washington's campaign to block his re-election, diplomats and analysts say.
The Washington Post reported on Sunday that US officials had been combing through intercepted phone conversations between International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed ElBaradei and Iranian officials for evidence of mistakes that could be used to force his ouster.
Mr ElBaradei, speaking on the sidelines of a conference in Dubai, declined to comment on the report. "I won't talk," he said on Monday when asked about it. "If they wanted to undermine him, they would have had to do it differently," a European diplomat said. "It only reinforces ElBaradei."
Some US and other countries' officials have privately complained that Mr ElBaradei was not only soft on Iraq and Iran, but had also withheld information from the IAEA's board of governors that could boost the US campaign to refer Iran's case to the U.N. Security Council for economic sanctions.
Mr ElBaradei says there is no clear proof that Washington is right and Iran is seeking the bomb. But he has repeatedly said the jury was still out. Ignoring Washington's opposition, Mr ElBaradei recently announced he would run for a third term as director general of one of the United Nations' most high profile agencies.
The 62-year-old Egyptian lawyer has held the post since 1997 and is up for re-election next year. Gary Samore, head of non-proliferation at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, said there was nothing unusual about the United States spying on Mr ElBaradei.
"To me it's not particularly shocking. What would be shocking to me would be if the US wasn't taping all of his conversations with the Iranians," said Mr Samore, who was an adviser on proliferation under US president Bill Clinton.
"But it may have the boomerang effect of making countries less likely to join an American challenge," Mr Samore said. US officials have said they can block Mr ElBaradei, but Mr Samore doubted Washington could now muster the 12 votes on the 35-nation IAEA board needed to block Mr ElBaradei's re-election.
"ElBaradei's quite popular," he said. "I just don't think they have the votes. And they don't have a (replacement) candidate. You can't fight something with nothing."
AN "UNFORTUNATE REALITY": "We've always had to assume that there were those who were interested in what we were saying and doing," IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky said. "The best defence has been to work on the basis that some are listening...It's not the way we would prefer to work, but that's the unfortunate reality."
A Western diplomat in Vienna, who works closely with the IAEA, said Washington's accusations that Mr ElBaradei has been soft on Iran were little more than an attack on his "politeness" and "common courtesy" in his dealings with the Iranians.
The administration of President George Bush has a long history of dissatisfaction with Mr ElBaradei, which began with his refusal to back US allegations that Saddam Hussein had revived his clandestine atom bomb programme.
After the invasion of Iraq, there were numerous media reports that US officials had spied on former chief U.N. arms inspector Hans Blix, whom they also viewed as soft. Like Mr ElBaradei, Blix had refused to confirm US claims that Saddam had hidden stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons.
One diplomat in Vienna said he was not optimistic about ElBaradei's chances of keeping his post, citing the successful US push to remove Jose Bustani as the head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in 2002.
But Mr Samore said Mr Bustani's case was different. "He was generally seen as a poor manager ... In the case of Mohamed, he's doing a good job. Let's not forget, he was right about Iraq."
IRAN MOCKS US: Iran on Monday accused the United States of violating international law by allegedly listening in on telephone calls between Mohamed ElBaradei and Iranian diplomats.
Government spokesman Abdollah Ramazanzadeh claimed that the conversations did not even merit being bugged given that nothing secret was ever even discussed with the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
"This affair is not very important, because we don't have any secret discussions with Mr ElBaradei and tapping the calls would not make any difference," the spokesman told reporters.
But he added that "this is not the first time we have seen the United States violate international rules. "We would expect those people who spend their time accusing other of breaking international law to respect it themselves," he said. -Reuters / AFP
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