Does Bush dodge photo ops with
ElBaradei? Even more pettiness?
Bill Broad and David Sanger have must reading in The New York Times today. They report that the Bush Administration has essentially no relationship with the IAEA, stifling investigation of the A.Q. Khan network.
Broad and Sanger open with a fascinating story of a petty dispute that emerged when inspectors discovered a nuclear weapons blueprints in Libya:
The experts from the United States and the I.A.E.A., the United Nations nuclear watchdog – in a reverberation of their differences over Iraq’s unconventional weapons – began quarreling over control of the blueprints. The friction was palpable at Libya’s Ministry of Scientific Research, said one participant, when the Americans accused international inspectors of having examined the design before they arrived. After hours of tense negotiation, agreement was reached to keep it in a vault at the Energy Department in Washington, but under I.A.E.A. seal.
It’s a specific example of the broad hostility that Washington feels toward Vienna. “I can’t remember the last time we saw anything of a classified nature from Washington,” one of the agency’s senior officials told Broad and Sanger.
On a related note, I can’t seem to find a photo of Bush with ElBaradei, even though the two have clearly met. Is this some further, unexplained White House pettiness?