There is no more frightening issue in international relations today than the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the possibility that they will fall into the hands of aggressive dictators or terrorists. The man charged by the world community with averting this calamity is Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, Director General of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). An Egyptian diplomat with a doctorate in law from New York University, he was a member of the delegation that negotiated the peace settlement with Israel at Camp David in 1978. In 1991, he headed the UN inspection team that demolished Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program. Since 1997, he has headed the IAEA, an agency founded 40 years earlier at the instigation of President Dwight Eisenhower. In 2005, the Nobel Prize committee honored Dr. ElBaradei and the agency he leads for his courageous resolve "to prevent nuclear energy for being used for military purposes and to ensure that nuclear energy for peaceful purposes is used in the safest possible way." One day may find him observing the opening of a radiation clinic in Ghana, another will find him in grueling negotiations with the leaders of North Korea or Iran. To others, the struggle against nuclear proliferation may look hopeless, but not to Dr. ElBaradei. "I firmly believe the IAEA can make the difference between war and peace," he says, and goes back to work.
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