UN VIP searched at airport

2005-11-08 07:55

Vienna - Mohamed ElBaradei, who recently won the Nobel Peace Prize and heads the International Atomic Energy Agency, was searched at Boston airport, before being allowed to fly to Washington, an agency official told AFP Monday.

IAEA deputy director general David Waller said that ElBaradei saw the incident "as nothing but a misunderstanding and he appreciates what the US administration has done to make sure we don't run into difficulty like that again."

He said the incident occurred on Sunday.

ElBaradei's wife, who is Egyptian like him, was also stopped and searched. An American and an Australian travelling with ElBaradei were not searched, diplomats said.

One diplomat, contacted in Washington from Vienna, said ElBaradei, director general of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), was "really angry and embarrassed by the incident."

Incident 'not important'

But Waller said Elbaradei felt the incident was "not important. What is important is what Dr ElBaradei has come here to do, in the broadest sense we're talking about the (nuclear) non-proliferation agenda."

Waller, who worked in the administration of former United States President Ronald Reagan, said he had immediately contacted "some people at the State Department and they bent over backwards to make sure that doesn't happen again."

Waller, who is also travelling in the United States but was not with ElBaradei in Boston, said the people who had searched ElBaradei were "contract" security officials and "not government employees."

"The point here is that the (US) administration has been very thoughtful in making sure that all aspects of the trip go well," Waller said.

ElBaradei spoke last week at the UN General Assembly and then was in Boston where he spoke at both Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

He was travelling to Washington where he will be attending a conference on non-proliferation and is to meet US officials, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

ElBaradei and the UN watchdog IAEA were on October 7 declared the winners of this year's Nobel Peace Prize.

The United States, which has severely criticised ElBaradei in the past, welcomed the honor without mentioning past disagreements over Iraq's suspected nuclear arsenal or initial US resistance to a third term for ElBaradei as IAEA chief.

"I congratulate the International Atomic Energy Agency and its director general, Dr Mohamed ElBaradei, on being awarded this year's Nobel Peace Prize," Rice said on October 7.

- AFP