Tehran, July 17 (DPA) Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has appointed the former envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Ali-Akbar Salehi, as the new head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation, Fars news agency said Friday.
Salehi will succeed Gholam-Reza Aqazadeh who resigned from the post recently.

In his new post, the US-trained scientist will be responsible for all technical aspects of his country’s contentious nuclear programme.

The soft-spoken official was posted in Vienna in 2003 when the IAEA started its probe of Iran’s nuclear activities, which had been kept secret for 18 years.

“I find him a man of dialogue,” the IAEA’s former chief nuclear inspector Pierre Goldschmidt told DPA from Belgium.

Both men worked in Vienna when Iran agreed to a protocol allowing more extensive IAEA inspections in late 2003, and to suspending some of its nuclear activities, as Western countries had demanded.

“I think it is a positive sign,” Goldschmidt said of Salehi’s appointment.

Tehran later limited the range of the IAEA’s probes and restarted its uranium enrichment activities, which the UN Security Council has been unable to stop through sanctions.

Aqazadeh had been a member of government for the past two decades, first as oil minister, and later responsible for nuclear matters.

Although he is considered to be loyal, he does not belong to the camp of the recently reelected president and is said to have connections to opposition leader Mir-Hossein Moussavi.