Argentina’s Grossi Wins Top Job at International Atomic Watchdog

(Bloomberg) -- Argentine’s Rafael Grossi won the election to head the world’s nuclear watchdog on Tuesday, clinching a post with oversight on some of the world’s most vexing hotspots.

The International Atomic Energy Agency‘s 35-member board elected Grossi, 58, during a fourth day of secret balloting in Vienna, according to multiple diplomats tweeting from inside the sealed chamber. It’s only the sixth time since the dawn of the nuclear age that the IAEA has sought a new director general.

Grossi, who’ll be the first Latin American to hold the post, now faces the prospect of keeping tabs on Iran among other crises. He replaces Japan’s Yukiya Amano, who died in July after holding the job for a decade.

He won backing from two-thirds of the board, including a key South American bloc led by Brazil. U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry last month in Vienna touted Grossi as a good fit for the job and urged countries not to drag out the process of finding new IAEA leadership.

To contact the reporter on this story: Jonathan Tirone in Vienna at jtirone@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Reed Landberg at landberg@bloomberg.net, Flavia Krause-Jackson

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