Only Japan and South Africa have submitted candidates for succeeding Mohamed ElBaradei at the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the Vienna-based organization confirmed on Friday in a statement.
As ElBaradei’s third and last term ends at the end of November this year, Yukiya Amano of Japan and Abdul Samad Minty of South Africa, who represent their countries at the IAEA Board of Governors, are now vying for the prestigious post of director-general.
The deadline for IAEA member states to name candidates ended on Wednesday.
Vienna-based diplomats said late last year that neither candidate currently had the necessary two-thirds majority among the 35 countries on the IAEA’s governing board, which might make it necessary to reopen the race for other candidates.
Amano, 62, is Japan’s ambassador to the international organizations in Vienna and was previously director-general of his foreign ministry’s Disarmament, Non-Proliferation and Science Department.
Minty, 69, is based in South Africa, where he chairs his country’s Council for the Non-Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction.
The diplomat has represented South Africa at the IAEA governing board since 1995.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, the diplomats said that Japan was investing a lot of political and diplomatic capital in Amano’s candidature, in an effort to lead the race by the time of the next regular IAEA board meeting in March.
While Amano is supported by Western countries, Minty is backed by African IAEA members and a number of developing countries.
The board has to choose a new director-general until the IAEA’s annual General Conference in September.
As the sun sets on another scorching Yangon day, the hot and bothered descend on the Myanmar city’s parks, the coolest place to spend an evening during yet another power blackout. A wave of exceptionally hot weather has blasted Southeast Asia this week, sending the mercury to 45°C and prompting thousands of schools to suspend in-person classes. Even before the chaos and conflict unleashed by the military’s 2021 coup, Myanmar’s creaky and outdated electricity grid struggled to keep fans whirling and air conditioners humming during the hot season. Now, infrastructure attacks and dwindling offshore gas reserves mean those who cannot afford expensive diesel
Does Argentine President Javier Milei communicate with a ghost dog whose death he refuses to accept? Forced to respond to questions about his mental health, the president’s office has lashed out at “disrespectful” speculation. Twice this week, presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni was asked about Milei’s English Mastiff, Conan, said to have died seven years ago. Milei, 53, had Conan cloned, and today is believed to own four copies he refers to as “four-legged children.” Or is it five? In an interview with CNN this month, Milei referred to his five dogs, whose faces and names he had engraved on the presidential baton. Conan,
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed his pledge to replace India’s religion-based marriage and inheritance laws with a uniform civil code if he returns to office for a third term, a move that some minority groups have opposed. In an interview with the Times of India listing his agenda, Modi said his government would push for making the code a reality. “It is clear that separate laws for communities are detrimental to the health of society,” he said in the interview published yesterday. “We cannot be a nation where one community is progressing with the support of the Constitution while the other