Thursday, January 27, 2011

Mohamed ElBaradei Biography


Thanks to W for this contribution

"....After completing his doctorate, he was appointed Special Assistant to the Foreign Minister of Egypt, a position he held until 1978. President Nasser's successor, Anwar al-Sadat, broke the close ties to the Soviet Union that Nasser had cultivated. Instead, Sadat sought closer ties with the West and peace with Israel. ElBaradei served on the Egyptian negotiating team at the historic Camp David peace talks that led to Egypt's peace treaty with Israel.....

In the wake of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, ElBaradei was sent to Iraq to uproot the country's nuclear weapons program. His team blew up laboratories and pulverized equipment. In 1997, ElBaradei was chosen to succeed Hans Blix as Director General of the IAEA. The following year, Saddam Hussein expelled the weapons inspectors from his country. By then, ElBaradei was convinced they had destroyed Iraq's entire nuclear weapons program, although the status of chemical and biological weapons remained more mysterious.....

In a State of the Union address, U.S. President Bush asserted that Iraq was buying uranium in Africa. Several weeks elapsed before the U.S. presented the IAEA with a document, obtained in Italy, that purported to validate the allegation. IAEA investigators quickly identified the document as a forgery. ElBaradei dismissed the evidence before the UN Security Council....."

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