VIENNA — The chief of the world's nuclear weapons watchdog organization considers five years of U.S. and international efforts to rein in Iran's nuclear ambitions a failure, as Tehran moves ever closer to obtaining the means to develop weapons of mass destruction.
The United Nations Security Council has imposed three sets of sanctions to try to get Iran to halt uranium enrichment and other activities, while the United States and Europe have offered economic and security incentives. Yet Iran continues acquiring nuclear technology and stockpiling sensitive material.
"We haven't really moved one inch toward addressing the issues," said Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA. "I think so far the policy has been a failure."
The 66-year-old Egyptian diplomat and 2005 Nobel Peace Prize laureate also urged world leaders to address broader unease about security, poverty and perceived injustice rather than zero in on narrow security concerns, such as nuclear weapons.
"Now, I am talking more and more about poverty, HIV/AIDS" and other matters, he told The Times this week during a rare one-on-one interview at the agency's headquarters in Vienna. The nuclear issue "is the tip of the iceberg."
Still, atomic energy remains the focus of his U.N.-related agency and ElBaradei said he felt optimistic about an eventual U.S.-led settlement between Tehran and the West.
He said U.S. President-elect Barack Obama gave him "lots of hope" after he inserted a proposal to abolish all nuclear weapons in the Democratic Party platform and advocated opening diplomatic dialogue with rivals.
"He is ready to talk to his adversaries, enemies, if you like, including Iran, also [North] Korea," he said, adding that the Bush administration was reluctant to do so. "To continue to pound the table and say, 'I am not going to talk to you,' and act in a sort of a very condescending way -- that exaggerates problems."
During 11 years as head of the agency, ElBaradei has sparred frequently with the Bush administration, which sought unsuccessfully to deny him a third term in 2005. That move was the result of the bitter dispute he had with Washington over its insistence that Iraq had a nuclear program. Its nonexistence vindicated him and earned him and his agency the Nobel.
Still, some Western diplomats accuse his agency of not being tough enough on the nuclear ambitions of countries such as Iran, Syria and North Korea.
