Largely outside the public limelight, one of the world's most important elections has been taking place in Vienna. Its victor will become the next leader of the planet's so-called nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). That agency has served as the world's guardian of peaceful nuclear power programs for more than 50 years, ensuring that countries do not abuse their "right" to atomic energy by building nuclear weapons. It's (literally) Nobel Prize-winning work. But unfortunately, the IAEA's elections are a secretive and convoluted mess.

I'll explain why in a second, but first, some context. Iran might be on the verge of making weapons-grade uranium, and the IAEA and its outgoing director-general, Mohamed ElBaradei, have been thrust into the spotlight over their accounting of Iran's nuclear program. Many experts fear that if Iran arms itself with nuclear weapons, a cascade of proliferation will spill across the region, causing potentially irreparable damage to the nonproliferation regime. The stakes for the election could not be higher.

Yet after six weeks, there is no sign of a breakthrough. After neither of the two original candidates was able to garner enough votes to win, three more would-be directors-general were added to the ballot last week.

What's the holdup?

In a nutshell: It's the process. When ElBaradei described himself as a "secular pope" in a September 2007 interview with the New York Times, he was not likely thinking about the IAEA election -- but he could have easily been. As befitting a nuclear papacy, the ballots are cast in secret. No puff of white smoke announces the winner (as with the Vatican), but like the College of Cardinals, the 35 members of the board of governors signal their intentions to one another while concealing their votes from the public. For an organization whose watchword is transparency, the irony is rich.

The initial rounds of failed election attempts highlight board members' deep disagreements over what qualifications matter most. Here, the ElBaradei legacy weighs heavily. He shared the Nobel Peace Prize with the IAEA in 2005, vindicating the director-general's belief that he is on a mission to prevent war. Although some countries welcomed ElBaradei's activist approach -- he passionately disputed the Bush administration's claims about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, for example -- others would surely prefer someone less controversial. That difference of opinion often falls along economic lines, with richer countries pushing for a technocrat and the developing world advocating a peacemaker.

Ambassador Yukiya Amano of Japan has been the favorite of the United States and many other developed countries precisely because he is a technocrat with a low political profile. But Amano failed to secure the required two-thirds majority by one vote, most likely because he was perceived as too close to the United States.

The second first-round candidate, South Africa's Ambassador Abdul Samad Minty, is a favorite among the less-developed, nonaligned world. He has hinted heavily that he would step into the role of peacemaker.

The failure to elect either Amano or Minty in the opening rounds of voting has widened the field to three more candidates: Luis Echávarri of Spain, Ernest Petric of Slovenia, and Jean-Pol Poncelet of Belgium were announced on April 29.

Echávarri appears to be the strongest of the new slate. A soft-spoken man, he has signaled a position that balances pressure on Iran with ensuring that the entire developing world has access to peaceful nuclear technologies. As the head of the OECD's Nuclear Energy Agency, he also has impeccable technocratic credentials. Petric, a former chair of the board of governors, and Poncelet, a former Belgian deputy prime minister and a senior vice president of the French nuclear industry giant Areva, have solid political and technological experience as well.

IAEA watchers expect Amano to push for an early vote before the new candidates can fully mobilize support. Some are still on the lookout for a possible "dark horse" candidate -- most likely Chilean Ambassador Milenko Skoknic, who served as the previous chairman of the board -- to emerge if the current group of five does not pass muster. The board would like to select its new director-general by early June to give adequate transition time before ElBaradei departs in November.

Whoever finally gets the nod will have to continue ElBaradei's work of building the agency up from a traditionally underfunded and understaffed one to an international powerhouse of legitimacy and technical capability. To win those resource battles, the new director-general must have sufficient political gravitas to balance the interests of the developing and developed worlds, reminding these camps that they share the mutual interest of preventing nuclear proliferation and providing for the safe and secure application of nuclear energy. The new director-general, in effect, should truly be a nuclear pope, seeking to bring the world a religious adherence to nonproliferation.