Before we discuss your present work, we'd like to hear something about your childhood and your parents. What kind of work did they do, and how do you think that influenced your own personal journey? Mohamed ElBaradei: My father was a lawyer. My mother was a homemaker.
My father was president of the Egyptian Bar Association. He was involved very much during the Nasser era -- which was one of the most repressive eras in Egyptian history -- in fighting for democracy, fighting for human rights, and I think that to a lot of extent shaped my view as to what I wanted to do in the future. I wanted to have a world where people are free to express their views, to have freedom of worship, to have freedom from want, and I saw poverty in Egypt when I grew up. To me, freedom, in the larger sense -- to be able to speak, to worship, free from want, free from fear -- I think it was a key as to what I thought I would like to do when I grow up.
Did you have any siblings? Mohamed ElBaradei: I had two sisters and two brothers. I was the eldest. So I was sort of a role model for my siblings. When did you first think about going into law? Mohamed ElBaradei: It always was on my mind, I think, to be a lawyer. I guess I thought law would give me the opportunity to work as a social engineer, if you like, to try to develop a society that is free, that is at peace with itself. I always wanted to be a lawyer. I'm not sure that I was influenced by my father.
I think I was just influenced by the environment under which I am living. I lived in an upper middle-class community, so I didn't really, personally, have to suffer any of -- at least, you know -- freedom from want or any of that stuff, but there was always fear around. You know, there was always fear around, and I saw that my father at one point was harassed just (for) trying to speak freely, and that actually affected me deeply, and I thought law is the best way for me to influence the shape of the future.
What was he harassed about? What was he trying to say?
What kind of unsubtle ways? Mohamed ElBaradei: Trying to tap our telephone conversations, trying to discourage people from going to him as a lawyer, trying to sort of restrict his practices, lots of what you call "dirty tricks." Were they effective in suppressing him? Mohamed ElBaradei: No, they were not. I mean, my father was a very low-key person, very short, very affable person, but he had an iron will, and I don't think it affected him. I think he continued believing in what he believed in. He continued to speak his mind. In my view, he died as a hero. When was that? Mohamed ElBaradei: 1977. So he did not live to see the situation you're in today. Mohamed ElBaradei: No, he did not. I always hate it, but he did not. So you had seen an example of the strength and courage to speak out, even though you're being harassed. Mohamed ElBaradei: Sure. I thought it should not affect you. I think if you have a larger cause to serve, that's much more important than being intimidated by personal harassment. Tell us a little bit about your school life. Did you like to read? Were there books you particularly remember liking?
What books did you particularly like as a kid? Mohamed ElBaradei: Lots of books. Literature and history, I think were the two areas where I was impressionable. History gave me the sense of perspective, you know, and literature would just allow you to dream. Any particular authors that come to mind? Mohamed ElBaradei: Well, many. I think Steinbeck, for example, was one of my favorites, Somerset Maugham, Hemingway. Quite a few. Do you still read fiction? Mohamed ElBaradei: Unfortunately, I don't. My wife now reads fiction. I don't have the time to read fiction. My wife reads the fiction and summarizes it to me, but I wish at one point I'll have time again to read fiction. It is a luxury I cannot afford right now. Because you have too many facts to read about? Mohamed ElBaradei: There's so many facts to read about. Even more than I can grasp. Absolutely. How did you come to enter a diplomatic career? Mohamed ElBaradei: I wanted to be a lawyer in Egypt. I wanted to practice there.
I wanted to be directly involved in my society, where I grew up, but things were just too tough, and I didn't see how I could do much with the policy of socialism which basically gave very little for private practice for a lawyer to be able to work and express himself, and I thought for a while, maybe diplomacy will give me the opportunity to go abroad, to see an alternative lifestyle and see what I can learn. Eventually, I thought I should learn, through diplomacy, through living abroad, and then come back to Egypt and be able to effect change.
Unfortunately, it has been over 30 years while I am going through the journey, but you never plan your life the way you wanted. I know what I want to do, and that's what I'm still doing, but I'm doing it in different ways. I think my vision probably has been enlarged.
My focus when I left Egypt in the '60s was Egypt-centered, but then I went to New York, and I went to do my graduate work in New York, and there, again, I recognized both through my academic studies, through my mentors at university, through living in this melting pot that the world is just bigger than one country, and you are really better off if you have a global picture. If you want to achieve change, you shouldn't focus on one particular people, one particular country, one particular language, but try to look at the global picture and try to integrate humanity, and I think that -- that really now is my passion, and I think by doing this, I am serving every single person in the world by trying to get all of us together.
So there you were in New York, and there was the United Nations building. At what point did you feel attracted to that building and think of yourself working there? Mohamed ElBaradei: I sort of found my niche there.
I found that I am dealing with people from over 160-70 nations at that time. I've been exposed to every culture, to every language, to every cuisine, and I felt very much at home. I had a lot of fun, and I realized how much we have in common. That was a key, how much we have in common, how much our values are shared values, how much our differences are really superficial at many levels. We talked about borders, nationality, ethnicity, but you look at -- fundamentally, our core values are absolutely shared. We have the same hopes, same aspirations, would like to get the best for our children, would like to live a good life, and that is really what I got from living in New York. That's what I got from working at the UN. That's what I got through going to NYU Law School and getting that intellectual discipline, how to channel this vision into a more effective way.
One advantage you had was being exposed to different languages at an early age. When did you first study English and French and so forth?
Mohamed ElBaradei: We had English at school. In primary school, we studied English, and I think at grammar school, we had some French. I had for a couple of years a French nanny. Again, that was my father's long-term vision. He thought that languages are key to development. So I grew up with three languages, if you like, and of course, they came in handy in the future. My children are even more fortunate. They have four languages.
What's their fourth language? Mohamed ElBaradei: German. From living in Vienna, of course. They went to high school in Vienna. Did you pick up German too, along the way? Mohamed ElBaradei: Unfortunately, I didn't. Right now, I live in a cocoon. I live and speak and think in English right now. I rely on my wife and my children when I need German, but I have enough German to get by, at least in Vienna. Could you tell us about your first missions at the UN?
Mohamed ElBaradei: My first mission -- I was a young diplomat there -- and I was looking into the UN budget, the UN management. I was assigned also to look at the legal aspect of working, treaty-making. I was also looking into or giving a glimpse into the effort to control nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction. It was a variety of experience. I was an apprentice at that time, and that is usually very helpful because you don't have the responsibility. You can just sit in the corner and look at what other people are doing, and learning by watching people doing, going around their job.
But later on, of course, then I progressed. After New York, I went to Egypt, and I worked as a special assistant to the Foreign Minister, who picked me up after I completed my doctorate in law. I was a young, ambitious diplomat at that time, who would like to see things done differently, and this was very crucial. When you returned to Egypt, do you think you were changed by your experience in New York?
Then I went back. I mentioned working with the Foreign Minister in 1974 in Egypt, and this was a crucial time. This was a time after the '73 war between Israel and Egypt, and the effort to start a peace process.
It was fantastic for me as a young diplomat to sit in meetings with Henry Kissinger, going through his shuttle diplomacy, going to a meeting in the Oval Office with President Carter, going to see a meeting with the Foreign Minister of Russia -- Gromyko. I was all over the place, seeing people at the very high level of diplomacy, watching carefully, seeing how people negotiate, how people interact, how people cut a deal, and I would say these three, four years in working as a special assistant, as a confidante to the Foreign Minister of Egypt -- Mr. (Ismail) Fahmi at that time -- was crucial in getting the practical experience, how nations and people interact, and you realize at the end of the day how important the psychology is.
It is not as much about substance as about how to connect with people, how to bring your views across, how to understand where people are coming from, and at the end of the day, how you cut a deal, how you make a compromise.
I think that is the most important lesson you learn in life, that you have to be ready to make a compromise. You do not compromise your principles, but you have to be ready to compromise. You have to understand that you cannot get your way 100 percent. Life is too complicated. You are not an island, and you work in a social setting, and you need to understand that you work always -- at the family level, at the society level -- to work out the compromise that is perceived to be fair. You don't get 100 percent of what you want, but at least you will get the basic minimum that you require.
You mentioned President Carter. It is often suggested that he had more influence on the world after his presidency than during it, because he has some of those gifts. Mohamed ElBaradei: Sure. How did you find him at that time? Mohamed ElBaradei: I found him a man of integrity, absolutely. People disagreed on how effective he was as President, but I think everybody agreed that he's the most effective former President alive right now. I have a lot of respect and admiration for President Carter. It was a delight when I got the Nobel Peace Prize to get a letter from him. It meant a lot to me, getting that letter from a man who is my idol in many ways. What did he say?
In what way was he a model for you? Mohamed ElBaradei: He always has the courage to express his views, his convictions. He doesn't hesitate to run against the current. He has always had a moral certitude. He looks at the ethics and morality of his action, and that's key. Whatever we do in life, whether privately or publicly, we need to have a compass. We need to be sure that what we do is not only good for us, but good for the people at large. That's ethics. That's morality. I think we need to always know that our work is not just good for us in the short term, but it's morally correct. And when I talk about morality, I don't talk about religion. I talk about a moral code, a moral value, which I think we all have, being honest, being fair, being correct. These are values I think we all share. As a parent, did you talk about that with your kids, or did you see it more as a process of modeling? Mohamed ElBaradei: I think it's more modeling. I never bring in my children and say, "Listen, these are the values you should follow in life." I think it's a modeling by my wife and me. I think we give them a good life. They saw how we go through life: a difficult time, a hard time, good time. I am very happy. I think they are good kids. If I have hope, it's because I look at my children.
My children grew up in six countries. They were born in Geneva. They went to grammar school in New York. They went to high school in Vienna. They went to college in London. They went to graduate schools in the U.S., and now they are working both in London. So for them, they are absolutely color-blind. They are absolutely religious-blind. They are absolutely ethnic-blind. For them, home is the world. For them, every human being is just one member of that large human family you have.
So, if we have more of these kids, if we have more children like mine, in my view, we will not have war. We will not continue to kill each other like we did in the Stone Age. The key is get as many people as possible exposed. The key is to get many people to travel. The Achievement Summit is exactly what we need, 100 million times. Get everybody to see the rest of the world, to interact with the other people. Then you realize how much the stereotyping, the us-versus-them will evaporate. It's also an enrichment of culture. Young people who study the arts and culture of other countries feel more at home in the world. Mohamed ElBaradei: Sure. I'm exactly the same. I was saying the other day that my wife and I, having spent 35 years in different countries, we fit more or less, everywhere. We do not fit 100 percent anywhere, but we fit, more or less, everywhere in the world. So we feel comfortable wherever we are, which is a great feeling. Could you tell us how you made the transition from working for the Foreign Minister to where you are today and how you became more involved in the issue of nuclear energy?
Mohamed ElBaradei: I worked with the Foreign Ministry for a while, until 1980. I thought at that time, it was my view that I need to look at the global picture. I need to work with the international community at large. I felt working with the Foreign Service is too restricting for me, and I grabbed the opportunity when I was offered a job with the United Nations in 1980. That's how I started working with international institutions.
I worked with the UN Institute for Training and Research for a number of years. I was teaching international law at NYU at that time, and then I moved to the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency, in 1984. This was a journey of 21 years. I started as the agency rep in New York, then a legal advisor to the agency in Vienna, and then Assistant Director-General. Since 1997, I have been elected Director-General, and it hasn't been a quiet time since. As you know, we got into Iraq, we got into North Korea, we will get into Iran.
I have come to realize that a lot of our work would make the difference between war and peace, and it's work that in a way is my passion because I know we can -- not only through our work, but through my work and other people who are doing similar work -- create a safe and more humane world or we can usher the beginning of our destruction. Some people call it "God's work." I don't call it that way. I call it the work that -- I cannot see that I would stop doing as long as I am able to do it.
We all have our stresses and conflicts, but we don't have the kinds of pressures that you do. Your work is concerned with the world's survival. How do you deal with the stress?
Mohamed ElBaradei: First of all, you learn to manage stress. You learn to live with stress. I mean, stress is there all the time. There's no question about it. It's in the morning. It's at night. It's at 3:00 in the morning, but you need to learn how to manage stress. Sometimes it's more difficult than others, but you try to distract yourself. Whenever I have the chance, I like to go and have a round of golf. I have a passion for modern art. I have a passion for antique carpets, classical music. To me, these are distractions, and sometimes my wife, she think I'm obsessed with these little things, but I tell her it is my way of distracting myself from just constantly continuing about my work. But the stress is there. But sometimes, the euphoria you get from a sense of achievement in many ways compensates all the stress you had for a year or two.
Sometimes you see you have done something which has a positive impact on humanity. Just recently...
I was in Ghana, and I saw that we provided a radiotherapy machine to treat people with cancer in Ghana. It was the only radiotherapy machine in Ghana, and people from four different neighboring countries came to be treated with this machine. You have no idea the sense of achievement. You know, here is something, while not earth-shattering, but here is something at least where my organization and I could make a difference in helping people to survive.
Often, when we hear the word "nuclear," we only think of weapons, and forget how atomic energy is applied in medicine. Could you tell us more about the positive uses of atomic energy?
Mohamed ElBaradei: People forget the positive aspect of nuclear (energy) because what they see in the media all the time is the negative aspects of nuclear, is the agency role as a watch dog, as it is called. They forget that we still get 16 percent of the world's electricity from nuclear energy. They forget that we need nuclear energy, at least for the next 50 years, because we only have nuclear energy and fossil fuel: gas and coal. And gas and coal have their own problems -- climate change -- and nuclear, of course, has the risk of a severe accident. But we need both. We need to weigh the costs and benefits. We need to understand the benefits outweigh the cost.
I always give the example of flight. When we fly, we take a risk. But if we don't fly and we go walking? You make the choice. Either you go to New York in one week driving, and even there you take some risk, or you fly in five hours. Same with energy.
There is no source of energy that does not have some risk, and what we try to do with nuclear -- is maximize the benefit and minimize the risk. Then of course, there are those other applications of nuclear. In the medical field, for example, diagnosis and treatment of cancer, diagnosis of heart diseases through radioisotopes. I think every one of us would know a person who has been diagnosed with cancer or who has been treated through radiotherapy or through nuclear medicine, for example. That is an area where I would like to see maximizing around the globe.
I went to Nigeria recently, and I compare that with the U.S. In the U.S., every American has 16,000 kilowatt hours of electricity per year. That is enough, obviously, to empower your refrigerators, your air-conditioning, your iPods, everything you need. In Nigeria, they have 70 kilowatt hours per year. That translates into an 8-watt light bulb.
Did you say eight? Mohamed ElBaradei: An eight-watt light bulb. That's not even enough to power your personal computer. Without energy, there is no development. Without development, there is a sense of despair, and with a sense of despair, there are extremists. We need to understand always the link between development and security. That's something I very strongly believe in, and people need to understand. We cannot just erect borders.
We cannot erect walls between the north and the south, between the rich and the poor. We need to make sure that we have an equitable world, where every human being has the right to live a decent life, the right to live a life free from fear, the right to be able to send his kids to have education, the right to have Social Security in their old age. If you do that, I think the insecurities we feel -- the extremists that we are seeing -- will drop absolutely dramatically.
In your Nobel lecture, you looked back briefly at the end of the Cold War and the prospect for world peace at that time. It hasn't worked out that way, has it? Mohamed ElBaradei: No. Unfortunately, it hasn't worked out quite that way. At that time, everybody was euphoric that we will have a new world order, you know, a world order that does not rely on nuclear weapons, nuclear deterrence. Unfortunately, it didn't work that way.
We still have thousands of warheads in existence. We still have more than 20 -- 30 countries relying on nuclear deterrence for their own survival. It's always baffling to me. We seem -- as we mentioned -- to appreciate each other's cultures. You know, you would like to go and have an Ethiopian meal at Adams Morgan. You would like to go and have Ashtanga yoga, but when it comes to resolving our differences, it is really the Stone Age. It is, "Who has the biggest club?" We need to move away from that. We just need to understand that any system of security has to be based on human solidarity. It should be people-centered, and it should be based on a world that is interdependent, integrated, where everybody understands that security is not just based on border or language. Security is based on providing every single member of this one human family the right to live in peace and dignity. I think if we do that, you will see that we will not talk about war, but we will be talking about art, about culture, about education, about health.
There's lots of work we still need to do, and we need to start. As I said, we need to start with development work, but...
We also need to start with the weapon states -- the U.S., Russia -- leading by example. They haven't been leading by example. They have been continuing to send the message that, "We would like to keep our nuclear weapons. We would like to continue to rely on our nuclear weapons. We would like to modernize our nuclear arsenal." These are statements completely contrary to the commitment in 1970 to move toward nuclear disarmament. The whole nonproliferation regime was based on a commitment by those who do not have nuclear weapons, not to have them, but also equally a commitment by the five nuclear weapon states to move to a nuclear disarmament, and 30 years after the Nonproliferation Treaty, we are still far away from that goal.
You made an analogy once with your wife's being a preschool teacher. These countries say, "I don't want to give up my toys."
At this time, the United States insists that nuclear weapons are the only effective deterrent. Mohamed ElBaradei: My response is that instead of just saying, "This is the only effective deterrent," you should try to work on an alternative deterrent. "We are the one who created that nuclear deterrent, but we owe it to humanity to work on alternative deterrents." There's lots of ways that one can think of to have a world that does not rely on nuclear weapons. Of course, as I said, an important part is this interdependence, this integration, which would make it too costly to resort to war.
If I look at the European Union right now, it's absurd to think that any member of the European Union will go to war over their differences. They would continue to play dirty tricks against each other. They will continue probably to cheat each other here and there, but I don't think they will ever think of using force. Can we expand that European model of 25 countries to be a global model?
So it is not unthinkable. It is just a question of getting people and countries to integrate, getting people and countries to understand that what they have in common is much more than what separates them, and then the whole idea of borders, resources, nationalities, language will disappear, and we will have to find a better way to resolve our differences peacefully. It is not an easy thing. We are reaching a fork in the road right now. Technology is out of the tube in every way: chemical weapons, biological weapons, nuclear weapons.
Either we are going to see President Kennedy's prediction in the '60s that we will have 20, 30 countries with nuclear weapons -- which to me is the beginning of the end for civilization, because the possibility of having a nuclear holocaust through miscalculation, through unintentional error is there -- or we are going to say, "Well, we have to get rid of these nuclear weapons. We have to. We cannot continue to live under this Damocles' sword of a world that could destroy itself in a matter of an hour."
Right now, we still have U.S. missiles and Russian missiles targeted at each other, and the president of either country has half an hour to react in case of a report of a nuclear attack. I was talking to (former Senator) Sam Nunn. I was talking to (former Defense Secretary) Bill Perry last week, and it is just unfathomable, for them and for me, that 15 years after the cold war, we still live under this hair-trigger alert between Russia and the U.S. So lots of work can be done. We need to take a cold-headed approach, and we have to understand that business as usual is not the way. We need to look for a new framework for security that is not based on more armaments, but is based on integration of humanity, reducing inequalities, and trying to build institutions that help us to find peaceful solutions to our differences.
Mohamed ElBaradei: Personally, of course, it was an absolutely great feeling, particularly that my wife and I knew about it from watching television. They usually call you half an hour before, to give you the good news, but in our case, they thought if they would call, the media would know about it before they formally announced it. So it was just an exhilarating experience. We were jumping for joy watching television. But in a more professional way, the timing was absolutely perfect. We were getting lots of criticism.
I was getting lots of criticism by being outspoken, by speaking "out of the box," so to say, and I have been telling them then, I continue to tell them now, "I have no box. I have a job." I know that it can make the difference between war and peace, and I owe it to the people -- I owe it to the silent majority -- to speak up on what I see is going wrong and how we can fix it.
So the Nobel Peace Prize was a shot in the arm for us. There's no question. It gives us additional visibility. It gives us credibility, but it also gives us additional responsibility. There's a lot of expectation that we can and we should move forward to the best of our ability. I keep trying to lower these expectations by telling people we are just one player. You know, "I can succeed if you help me." That's why, wherever I go, I say...
Civil society has a key role in helping me and helping my organization create a better security system, because in the past, civil society has always focused on trade, on environment, but they thought that security is too sophisticated, that it should be left to government. That is bogus to me. This is an issue that has to do with our survival, and every one of us has a special responsibility to send a powerful message to the government that we need a better system, so that we do not see millions of people dying every year in internal conflict or as a result of war. In the last decade, there are 11 million people who died in internal strifes. This to me, are 11 million lives too many.
In Iraq, we have so far over 100,000 civilians who died -- innocent civilians who died -- during that war. This is to me, again, is 100,000 people too many. We still have 27,000 warheads. This is to me, 27,000 warheads too many. We need to think outside the box. People don't like to be reminded of these realities, but these are realities. Many times I ask myself. We must have a better way to resolve our differences than through just killing each other. You mentioned the toll on civilians in Iraq. Those are figures the U.S. Government doesn't talk about very often, but they can't avoid the figures of 2,000-plus American soldiers. Can you talk about how the United States got into this war?
Mohamed ElBaradei: I grieve about every person who dies in war. I grieve about the 2,200 American soldiers who lost their life. I grieve about that. The Iraqi civilians. I grieve about the three million-some who died in the Congo War. I grieve about the 3,000-some who died in 9/11. These are all lives lost unnecessarily, and they could have stayed with us, and it's a blot on our conscience. We need to understand that, before deciding to go to war, that we have exhausted every other possibility of reaching our differences through peaceful means.
Unfortunately, in the case of Iraq, I believe we could have done that through an inspection process. I was calling for a few months more to complete our work. We hadn't seen indications of weapons of mass destruction. We hadn't seen indications of nuclear weapons. I remember, I asked the Security Council for three more months to complete my work. I said, "This is an investment in peace." Unfortunately, it didn't work that way. There was faulty intelligence. There were lots of other considerations that made a decision to go to war tempting, to get rid of Saddam Hussein.
Saddam Hussein was a dictator, a ruthless dictator. There's no question about it, but I'm not sure that getting rid of every ruthless dictator around the world justified that we killed civilians. So there's lots of lessons I think we are learning from Iraq, that one is we should not and could not jump the gun. We have to rely on absolutely factual information. We have to verify, authenticate our information before we go. A second lesson, that as long as we have no imminent threat, no clear and present danger, we should continue to dialogue, and that we also need to understand where people are coming from.
You know, we need to understand that a lot of these frustrations, a lot of these aggravations are feelings of a sense of humiliation.
I think I have come to realize that it's not really poverty that drives people bananas. It's really a sense of injustice. There's a lot of poor people around the world, but when you repress the right of people to speak, when people fear that they are not being justly treated -- and you see a lot of that in the Middle East, you see a lot of that in the Muslim world -- I think people are getting it both ways. They are getting it from their government when they feel that they are repressed by their government -- they are not allowed to have the right to live in freedom and dignity -- and they are getting it from the outside world when they feel that the outside world is not fairly treating them. They wake up in the morning, and they see people dying in Iraq and Afghanistan, in the Palestinian territories. The sense of injustice, the sense of humiliation is very much there.
I visit there. I see that emotional anger. If we want to start a system of security, we really need to address more than the symptoms.
When we talk about terrorism, we cannot just say, "Let us use more force." Force is not going to end that phenomenon. We need to understand why these people are feeling the way they are feeling. This is a long-term process. This sometimes goes beyond the term of any government whose interest-span goes up to their next round of elections. These are long-term processes that we need to endure. We need to go and understand the causes. Otherwise, it will be a flash fire somewhere. It will be, "Today is Iraq, tomorrow is Libya, after tomorrow is Iran." But if we really want to avoid these temptations to develop weapons of mass destruction, we need to provide security for people, and as I said, we need the big boys to lead by example.
You cannot say that and ask everybody else to give up nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction. I used once the metaphor that you cannot continue to be a heavy smoker and dangle a cigarette from your mouth and tell your kids not to smoke. It doesn't work. You used the baseball analogy. The idea of getting into the major league is terribly seductive. As I hear you saying it, the only way to change that vision is for the people in the major leagues to say, "These bats and gloves aren't really worth anything to us." Mohamed ElBaradei: Correct. Absolutely. These bats and gloves does not mean much to us. We do not want to need them in the future. We need, all of us, to be part of one league, where the rules of the game are the same for everybody. What about Iran right now? Mohamed ElBaradei: Iran is a very complicated issue. Iran is really about security in the Middle East.
The nuclear issue is the tip of the iceberg in Iran. It masked a lot of grievances from both sides, ranging from the hostage-taking in 1979 to the overthrow of the nationally elected government in Iran in the '50s, the Mossadeq government. So there's a lot of grievances that span over five, six decades, and the only way to resolve these issues of grievances, insecurities is just for all the parties to sit and talk together. I am delighted that now the U.S. have decided to go and talk to the Iranians directly, face to face, put all the issues on the table. That is the only way. I have been saying that for a couple of years. There is no other solution. There is no military solution, and there is no solution that is enduring which is not a negotiated solution. Talking to each other does not mean weaknesses. Talking to each other does not mean that you legitimize or de-legitimize a particular regime or you accept the records of human rights, none of that. Talking to each other means that we have differences, and we can only settle our differences through talking face to face.
So I am hopeful. I hope that dialogue will flourish, and I will continue to do my very best to make sure that I continue in my little way to undergird that process and make sure that it comes to fruition. Do you think sanctions would be effective? Mohamed ElBaradei: I don't believe in sanctions. You can go through escalation. You can go through using sanctions, using pressure. It's a process when both parties will hurt each other. We will go into a period of mutual hurting.
Sanctions didn't work in the past, will not work in the future. In fact, it puts the hard-liners in both camps in the driver's seat when you apply pressure. It's the hard-liners who become popular. When you start dialogue, when you start to exchange ideas, goods, when people start to travel, when the Iranian people will continue to enjoy a new fleet of Boeing aircraft, when they start getting their new computer software, I think that is when you empower the silent majority in every country who are eager to have a decent life as part of the human community.
So the more we -- the more we de-emphasize the muscle and the punching, and the more we emphasize the shared humanity, the incentives, the better off we are. In these interviews we often discuss the concept of the American Dream. Having studied here, and having such a global vision, I wonder if you could tell us your understanding of the American Dream. Do those words mean something to you?
Mohamed ElBaradei: I have very much a concept of an American Dream. An American Dream meaning to be free, to be able to achieve what you want to do, to have an environment within which you can excel. I have always been an admirer of the American Dream. We grew up admiring the freedom you have in the U.S., the equality, the egalitarian system you have in the U.S. And I hope, with all the restrictions that we have seen after 9/11 that we will someday go back where the U.S. American Dream will be the way I saw it when I was growing up here in the '60s. It's a model that might not be replicated 100 percent everywhere else, but the basic element of the American dream is the future for humanity.
Thank you. Thank you very much.
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