UN's 'nuke watchdog' lacking funds

Newsweek

Oct. 20, 2006 - The International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna is often called the United Nations’ “nuclear watchdog.” Yet for most of the nearly 50 years it’s been in existence, its main functions were to promote “Atoms for Peace” and to check that signatories of the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) abided by their obligations, based on their own voluntary cooperation. All that was changed by the discovery of Iraq's secret weapons program in 1991. Then came the revelation of Iran's clandestine nuclear enrichment activities, North Korea's decision to build atomic weapons and the exposure of a clandestine nuclear network organized by Pakistani scientist AQ Khan.

On Monday, IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei will meet with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Washington. Before leaving Vienna, he gave an exclusive interview to NEWSWEEK’s Christopher Dickey about the challenge of tracking the new and dangerous trends in nuclear proliferation.