Israel Matzav

British nuclear monitoring expert 'falls' 12 stories from Vienna building

Early news reports said that Timothy Hampton, who worked for an international monitoring unit called the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO), died after falling 12 stories in a building in the Vienna International Center, one of the United Nations' main office complexes in Europe.

Reports said Austrian authorities would order an autopsy. "Everything points towards a suicide, and there are no signs of any third party being involved," a police spokesman, Alexander Haslinger, told the French news agency AFP. Authorities in Vienna have privately indicated to other governments that while suicide is the principal cause of death under investigation, they haven't ruled out the possibility that it could have been an accident or even murder, according to an official source in Washington. Official reports and a former U.N. official indicate that Hampton fell 12 stories down an internal emergency stairwell—from the 17th to the fifth floor—in the high-rise Vienna building.

Some news reports said that Hampton had been involved in the current round of negotiations between Iran, the U.S., and several other Western countries regarding Tehran's controversial nuclear program. However, his participation in the Iran talks could not be immediately confirmed, and a former U.N. official who worked at the Vienna complex said that officials who worked for the CTBTO were normally not supposed to have any involvement with the work of the IAEA, which is based in the same complex and is at the center of diplomatic discussions between the West and Iran.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:09 PM