Salehi, who last month helped avert a crisis with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as Iran signed up to tougher UN inspections of its nuclear programme, is to be replaced in Vienna by Iran's current ambassador to Austria, Pirouz Hosseini.

The foreign ministry, quoted by the state news agency IRNA, said Salehi -- a nuclear physicist educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States -- would serve as a scientific and international advisor to Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi.

WAR.WIRE