International Atomic Energy Agency

One might expect that the United States, which led a $50-billion Gulf War and then assigned the job of nuclear weapons searches in Iraq to the United Nations, would supply its share of funds to do the job. But, while inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) are still in Iraq, the IAEA director general, Hans Blix, reports that his agency and the U.N. Special Commission on Iraq are already $60 million in the hole.

Iran on Wednesday heralded what it called a pair of significant advances in its controversial nuclear research efforts, but Western observers generally downplayed the developments as more hype than substance. The official focus on nuclear "achievements" was aimed at showing domestic and international audiences that Iran was capable of moving ahead on the nuclear front despite international sanctions based on allegations that it is seeking weapons capability. Tehran contends that it is pursuing nuclear research only for peaceful uses, such as generation of energy and treatment of cancer patients.

He was born two years after the United States dropped atomic weapons on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II. And like many Japanese of his generation, Yukiya Amano is haunted by the bombings that killed tens of thousands of his countrymen, irradiated two Japanese cities and launched the anxieties of the nuclear era. "I have a very strong feeling against nuclear weapons," Amano, who was named head of the International Atomic...

In retrospect, weakness in the face of aggression is almost impossible to understand — or forgive. Why did the West do so little while the Nazis gathered strength in the 1930s? While the Soviet Union enslaved half of Europe and fomented revolution in China in the late 1940s? And, again, while Al Qaeda gathered strength in the 1990s? Those questions will forever haunt the reputations of the responsible statesmen, from Neville Chamberlain to Bill Clinton. The answer to the riddle — why did the West slumber?

Egypt's nuclear experiments were small, basic and did not appear to be part of an attempt to make weapons, the International Atomic Energy Agency said, praising Cairo's cooperation with an investigation of the country's mothballed clandestine activities. The report, compiled by the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, made clear that investigations would continue. The atomic research reportedly stretched back four decades and ended as recently as five years ago.

The International Atomic Energy Agency demanded that North Korea scrap its nuclear weapons program and urged the country to allow inspections. In a separate resolution, the 137-nation meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency called for the Middle East to become a nuclear-weapons-free zone. That resolution was seen as obliquely critical of Israel. The conference has no authority to enforce resolutions.

Some nuclear technology ordered by Libya for its former weapons program is missing, and the origin of other material is unclear, the International Atomic Energy Agency said. The Vienna-based agency's statement in a confidential report raised concerns about where the equipment is and whether North Korea could have been a provider.

New findings by the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency appear to strengthen Iran's claim that it has not enriched uranium domestically, diplomats said. The diplomats said the IAEA had established that at least some enriched particles found in Iran originated in Pakistan. The origins of hundreds of other samples have not been established, but the findings bolster Tehran's assertion that such traces were imported on contaminated equipment bought on the black market.

The International Atomic Energy Agency adopted a tougher program of nuclear inspections to try to thwart attempts by nations to secretly build nuclear arms. The Vienna-based U.N. agency approved the new measures after five years of negotiations among more than 130 member nations. "A good deal of what we are now doing is based on the lessons learned in Iraq," agency chief Hans Blix said.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said it has sent an emergency mission to Nigeria to help find an undisclosed amount of missing or stolen radioactive material. Nigeria asked the U.N. nuclear watchdog for help this month after the materials disappeared from an oil company in the southern Niger Delta region. Agency workers reportedly arrived Feb. 16.

Years of credible evidence indicates Iran may be secretly working to develop a nuclear weapon, the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency said Tuesday in a strongly worded report that renewed debate among Western powers over how to curb the Islamic Republic's nuclear ambitions. The report by the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency cites a series of suspect activities that raises "serious concerns" about "possible military dimensions to Iran's nuclear program. " Iran's leaders ordered a halt to an extensive nuclear program in 2003, the report says, but clandestine work on high-speed detonators and other weapons-related research "may still be ongoing.

Despite weeks of tough warnings, the Obama administration has backed away from its calls to impose new and potentially crippling economic sanctions against Iran in retaliation for an alleged plot to kill Saudi Arabia's ambassador on U.S. soil, according to diplomats and American officials. Though U.S. officials had declared that they would "hold Iran accountable" for a purported plot, they now have decided that a proposed move against Iran's central bank could disrupt international oil markets and further damage the reeling American and world economies.

When tens of thousands of antigovernment protesters filled Cairo's Tahrir Square for 18 tense days and toppled Egypt's brutal dictator early this year, Mohamed ElBaradei visited the street revolutionaries exactly once — briefly — and never went back. Since then, ElBaradei has made repeated appearances on American TV talk shows to portray himself as the leader of Egypt's opposition movement and to argue that he now should become the country's first freely elected president. Revisionism is a recurrent theme in ElBaradei's memoir, "The Age of Deception: Nuclear Diplomacy in Treacherous Times.

Japan did not properly protect its nuclear plants against the threat of tsunami before the March 11 disaster that caused radiation to spew from the Fukushima Daiichi facility, concludes a preliminary report released Wednesday by international nuclear experts. "The tsunami hazard for several sites was underestimated," says a three-page summary released by a United Nations nuclear safety team investigating the aftermath of a magnitude 9 earthquake that triggered a nearly 50-foot-high wall of water, deluging the plant.

The head of the U.N.'s atomic agency said Monday that the brewing crisis at Japan's reactors in the wake of the country's devastating earthquake and tsunami should lead officials around the world to reassess the international nuclear framework. "The agency's role in nuclear safety may need to be reexamined, along with the role of our safety standards," Yukiya Amano, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said in a briefing to the agency's governing board. "It is already clear that arrangements for putting international nuclear experts in touch with each other quickly during a crisis need to be improved.

Japan's earthquake-stricken nuclear facilities are unlikely to suffer the kind of catastrophic accident that occurred in Chernobyl 25 years ago, the Japanese director-general of the U.N.'s nuclear agency said Monday. The design and structure of Japanese nuclear power plants are different from the Soviet-era facility where an April 26, 1986, explosion blew the roof off the northern Ukrainian complex's No. 4 reactor, unleashing a radiation cloud that swept across Europe and around the world.

International health experts concluded that radiation from the 1986 nuclear explosion at Chernobyl did not cause major health disorders in the areas of the Soviet Union near the accident. The International Atomic Energy Agency said that 200 independent international experts determined after four days of talks that reports of adverse health effects from radiation were unsubstantiated.

The head of the U.N. nuclear monitoring agency and Germany's foreign minister urged Iran to halt all uranium enrichment work to help revive collapsed nuclear talks between Tehran and the European Union.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has been providing updates on the damaged Japanese nuclear plants on its Facebook page. "Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency has informed the IAEA's Incident and Emergency Centre that there has been an explosion at the Unit 1 reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, and that they are assessing the condition of the reactor core," the latest statement said. "The explosion was reported to NISA by the plant operator, TEPCO, at 0730 CET. Further details were not immediately available.

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