Mohamed ElBaradei is not a popular diplomat in Washington. As head of the UN's nuclear watchdog, he refused to back US claims that Iraq had restarted its nuclear weapons programme, insisting his inspectors had no evidence to support this.

He was proved right but the tensions with Washington have not eased. He apparently enraged the Bush administration recently when he warned, shortly before the November US presidential election, that 350 tonnes of high explosives were missing from an Iraqi facility that his agency had been monitoring before the invasion. His statements were seized on by John Kerry, President George W. Bush's Democratic rival, as proof of another administration blunder in Iraq.