Daily Telegraph
February 13, 2005
By Phillip Sherwell in Washington

America is stepping up its efforts to remove Mohammed El Baradei, the Egyptian head of the United Nations atomic energy agency, as Washington prepares for a showdown over Iran's secret nuclear programme, a senior Bush adminstration official has revealed.

"It cannot be good for an organisation when the biggest contributor and its director general are at odds with each other," said the official, who is at the heart of policy-making in Washington.

Mr El Baradei has just completed his second four-year term at the helm of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the usual limit for any chief of a UN body. Washington views him as soft on Iran's ruling clerics and suspects that he was behind the embarrassing leak about missing explosives in Iraq in the final week of last year's United States presidential election campaign.

"There are gracious ways to leave the stage," the official said. "El Baradei has not chosen the gracious way, but that has not changed our view that we need a new IAEA head." US officials are trying to gain support for a no-confidence vote, possibly at the next IAEA meeting on February 28.

As President George W Bush prepares for a four-day European trip to mend diplomatic fences after the rows over the Iraq war, the official said he believed that Washington and its European detractors were ready to "turn the page" on those disputes. The official said, however, that despite an apparent change of tone, there is no significant shift in American foreign policy at the start of the President's second term. In a sign of the deep transatlantic divide over how to handle Teheran's nuclear ambitions, he effectively accused Britain and its European allies of double standards for opposing US efforts to refer the issue to the UN Security Council.

"We get all this criticism for being unilateralist American cowboys, but it is the US that wants to take this to the Security Council," the official said. "Who's been opposing that? Britain, France and Germany - two permanent members of the Security Council and one that wants to be. So who's in favour of using the UN system and who's against it?"

The so-called EU3 (the British, French and Germans) reached an agreement with Teheran in December under which the Iranians, who say their nuclear programme is civil, not military, agreed to suspend uranium enrichment in return for trade accords and technical assistance.

The US believes that the deal will fail because of Iran's track record of duplicity about its nuclear activities, and wants to refer Teheran directly to the Security Council.

The official warned the European nations that their opposition to referring Iran to the Security Council "will not be forgotten in Washington" and said: "Next time we hear their views on the importance of the UN, we'll be reviewing previous comments by Europe on Iran."

The next IAEA board meeting at which members will discuss the work of its nuclear inspectors in Iran begins on February 28. American diplomats at its headquarters in Vienna have begun seeking backing for a no-confidence vote on Mr El Baradei, who began a third term in office last month after the US failed to find a challenger to oppose him.

Teheran last week again signalled its unwillingness to provide permanent guarantees that it has ceased all uranium enrichment operations as the mullahs celebrated the 26th anniversary of the overthrow of the Shah with mass street protests.

At the same time North Korea claimed for the first time that it has nuclear weapons, and said it was withdrawing from the six-nation talks with America, China, Japan, South Korea and Russia. It said it would talk only to the US. The American official said Washington would not agree to this, although the Bush administration does believe North Korea's claim. On China, the official repeated US opposition to a resumption of weapons sales by the European Union, which imposed an arms embargo after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. The EU is preparing to lift the embargo and substitute a code of conduct governing military sales, but the US fears that advanced weaponry sold to Beijing could be deployed against its own forces in the event of military confrontation over Taiwan.

The President will make clear his outright opposition to the French-led initiative in meetings in Belgium and Germany next week. In Washington, the House of Representatives condemned the EU plan by 411 votes to three, a sign of the strength of feeling in America.

The administration official warned Europe that Congress might legislate to prohibit US firms from trading with European companies that conduct military trade with China. "Those European firms would have to decide: it's us or China. If the EU goes ahead with this, it will call into question the whole basis of transatlantic defence arrangements."

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