The UN atomic watchdog's new chief must be "more careful" when making political statements, one of the five candidates to take over from Mohamed ElBaradei said in a newspaper interview published Wednesday.
"The new director general will certainly not be such a big personality with such big influence as Nobel laureate ElBaradei," Ernest Petric, a former Slovenian ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency told the daily Der Standard.
"So, he has to be more careful when making political statements," added Petric, 72, who is a constitutional court judge in Ljubljana.
ElBaradei steps down as IAEA head in November after 12 years in office.
He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005 and has never shied from controversy. ElBaradei has locked horns with the United States and other western nations over the role of the UN watchdog.
The United States has accused him of being too "soft" on Iran and of overstepping his mandate.
Petric said it was inevitable, given the nature of the IAEA's work, that there would be political fallout.
"The challenge for the IAEA is to carry out its work professionally and independently. Our job is to observe, judge and collect the facts independently and report to the board," he said. "The board then decides what to do. But then we're in the area of political decisions."
Slovenia has field him as a candidate to overcome deep divisions on the IAEA's 35-member board of governors, Petric said.
"I've been engaged in nuclear energy and nuclear technology for more than 30 years. The decision to stand as a candidate was a result of the situation on the IAEA board, whcih is deeply divided," Petric said.
"Slovenia said that we can perhaps get over this polarisation with a candidate who is acceptable for both sides."
The other candidates are Jean-Pol Poncelet, a former Belgian deputy prime minister, defence and energy minister, and current senior vice president of French nuclear group Areva; Japan's ambassador to the IAEA, Yukiya Amano; South African ambassador Abdul Samad Minty; and Luis Echavarri of Spain, head of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development's Nuclear Energy Agency.
Minty and Amano started as the only two candidates, but the race was re-opened after neither secured the necessary two-thirds majority for outright victory earlier this year.
Whoever takes over from ElBaradei will face the highly sensitive Iran, Syria and North Korea nuclear dossiers and will have to persuade member countries to contribute more money to its budget.
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