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The man in charge of protecting the world from nuclear devastation does not show much interest in his food. Mohamed ElBaradei rarely goes out for lunch. He says he prefers to eat a cream cheese or tuna sandwich at his desk in the high-rise Vienna offices of the world's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, where he has been the sometimes-controversial head since 1997.
He accepted ' the FT's invitation to eat out recently. But the menu lies forlornly in front of him at Vestibill, a faintly fashionable restaurant full of marble columns and imperial insignia that once served as a private dining room for the Austro-Hungarian emperor, Franz Josef.
I spurned Franz Josef's central table in favour of a more intimate booth, all the better to find out how great the risk of nuclear disaster really is, and whether this tall, elegant 63-year-old Egyptian lawyer is the man to stop it happening.
First, ElBaradei wants to reminisce about other booths he has known, and the American diners he frequented as a law professor at New York University in the 1980s. "Greasy eggs and bacon," he rhapsodises. "Nobody cares about fat and cholesterol any longer," he adds improbably. "I still like to go and have a pastrami or a corned beef" Eventually, he manages to choose something from the menu -- broth and a tuna steak.
The past six months have been mostly good for ElBaradei. He was reappointed for a third term in September, despite vigorous lobbying by the Bush administration, which was so irked by his refusal to back its claims about Iraqi and Iranian nuclear ambitions that it tapped his phone to find ammunition to block his reappointment. Soon after, in what some saw as a rebuke to Washington, ElBaradei and the IAEA were jointly awarded the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to ensure that nuclear technology is not used to make weapons. He is sanguine about the phone tapping business. "It didn't make me feel extremely ecstatic and it made my daughter extremely angry but we don't live in a perfect world. We know this comes with the territory."
The Nobel has made him a lot happier. He believes it has given him and his agency a platform to preach from at a time of deepening nuclear crises. "The timing is perfect," he says. "We are going through a crossroads with our whole collective security system. We have an international community at each others' throats all the time ... The UN security council is in many ways bust. You cannot really rely on it with confidence because it works by fits and starts."
In short, the time is right, ElBaradei believes, for his own ideas on nuclear non-proliferation to be put into practice.
Speaking before the most recent increase in tensions over Iran's nuclear programme, he emphasises the moral responsibility of the established nuclear weapons states.
While the debate in the west on nuclear weapons tends to focus on how to stop upstart countries, such as Iran, from obtaining unconventional weapons, ElBaradei also wants countries such as Russia and the US to fulfil pledges they made decades ago to work towards nuclear disarmament.
"You have to practise what you preach," he says, thumping the table and sending his cutlery juddering. "We have seen that in any region where there is insecurity, instability, the immediate thing that comes to the mind of some of these countries is: 'Let's develop nuclear weapons.' We've seen it in Libya, we've seen it in Iraq, we are still going through our Iran investigation ... The most important thing is to make the big boys understand that the major league is not an exclusive club. If you are not going to dissolve that club, others are going to join."
His frustration underlines the extent to which the 35 year-old non-proliferation treaty, the IAEA's guiding text, has become a contentious pact.
It was based on a bargain under which the five declared nuclear powers (the US, the former Soviet Union, the UK, France and China) promised not to transfer their weapons to other states and to negotiate a reduction in their arsenals. In return, non-nuclear signatories agreed to renounce any plans for weapons programmes; allow regular inspections of their facilities and only use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. Critics say too much attention has been devoted to countries suspected of trying to develop nuclear weapons, and not enough to the nuclear powers' failure to meet their commitments.
There are still 27,000 nuclear warheads in the world ("A dismal record," says ElBaradei) and although there are far fewer nuclear powers today than the 20 that President Kennedy once predicted would emerge, countries such as Israel, India, Pakistan and perhaps North Korea have all developed nuclear weapons.
Our food arrives at this point. My pumpkin carpaccio, though preposterously named, is delicious: tangy but not too sharp. ElBaradei takes a long time to even touch his bouillon, holding his spoon in the air as he talks in his quickfire, grammatically tortured English. Occasionally, he is defeated by the intractability of his subject and puts his cutlery back on his plate. At other times, he leans forward to make his point, his angular face with its salt-and-pepper moustache just in front of me, the shoulders of his suit jacket rising up to his ears.
"Nuclear weapons were a historical accident and we need to extricate ourselves from that," he says. "If you [disarm], then you have a different moral authority and then you can really clamp down on all those who are trying to imitate you."
But surely this is unrealistic. It is almost imposible to imagine the US and Russia - not to mention the other nuclear powers - ever getting rid of the bomb.
And wasn't the world more at risk of meltdown in the 1950s and 1960s when schoolchildren prepared for nuclear strikes and the world almost went to war over the Cuban missile crisis?
Apparently not.
"When you see more and more countries acquiring nuclear weapons, countries that do not really have sophisticated command structures; countries that can use nuclear weapons through miscalculation ... the odds that nuclear weapons could be used is higher," he says.
"Either we are going to have 20, 30, 40 nuclear weapons states, or we have to think of a different way of fixing our security." And then, he adds, with grim relish, there is terrorism - the greatest risk of all.
The conversation is getting positively depressing but ElBaradei seems to be hopeful: "The first step is the two major weapon states, Russia and the US, have to send a message that they are really serious about nuclear disarmament."
The message he wants sent would be an ambitious one - a formal halt to nuelear testing; negotiations on a "cut-off' treaty to stop the production of fissile material and an end to the system in which the US and Russian presidents have only 30 minutes in which to respond to a perceived nuclear attack. He also wants his member states to set up a "fuel bank" to supply uranium to countries with nuclear reactors, ridding non-weapon states of the need to acquire the fuel-processing technology that can also produce weapon-grade material.
Under such a scheme, he says, "if you are in compliance with your non-proliferation obligations, you always get what you need, whether you are a Buddhist or a Mullah".
This may seem unlikely at a time when the Bush administration is consumed by suspicion of Iran and has shown limited interest in new international treaties. And ElBaradei admits that "If you look at non-proliferation, arms control, there's no common vision right now and that's what really worries me a lot."
ElBaradei had previously rejected a glass of wine, pleading pressure of work. But as he starts to defend the record of the agency he has worked at for the past 21 years, he finally agrees to indulge.
Critics highlight the IAEA's "failure" to uncover the clandestine nuclear programmes that Iraq ran in the 1980s and that Iran maintained for two decades. He responds that the agency's resources and mandate are limited - and that it identified North Korea's programme back in 1992. "Peace is a process," he says. "People understand the difficult job we have and they are saying we salute you for the effort you are making. It doesn't mean they are saying you have succeeded everywhere.
"I have a lot of hope because the more people like you and me travel and go places, you'll never think of killing anybody," he says. "But that requires that you raise the standard of living of the poor parts of the world. Otherwise, they will continue to have their own little views of the rest of the world, they will continue to feel oppressed, continue to feel ashamed, humiliated."
As we get ready to leave, I ask where his home is today. He has spent two decades in Vienna, even though both his children live in London. "Home is where my wife is [Vienna], where my dog is." Or was. "He passed away," he adds. When I ask when his dog died, he laughs nervously. "A year ago. He was a cocker spaniel who lived with us for 14 years and he was our companion after the children left home ... It's lovely to come home and find a dog. He was called Chuck."
I think of the loneliness of ElBaradei's job as he gets up to leave. He offers me a ride in his car, which I decline. Left at the table in the restaurant, I wonder whether his vision of a world free of nuclear weapons stands much of a chance, and what will happen if he fails to achieve his near-impossible task.
Under syndication arrangement
with FE
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