by News Agencies and Israel Hayom Staff
"Such a process can only be launched when
peaceful relations exist for a reasonable period of time in the region,"
Chorev said. "Regrettably, the realities in the Middle East are far
from being conducive."
Israel has said it would sign the nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty and renounce nuclear weapons only as part of a
broader Middle East peace deal with Arab states and Iran that guaranteed
its security.
Chorev, the Israeli delegate, said the concept
of a region free of weapons of mass destruction "is certainly much less
applicable to the current volatile and hostile" Middle East and would
require a significant transformation in the region.
Chorev also warned Iran on Wednesday to stop
its "direct and blunt threats" against his country, telling a 155-nation
nuclear conference the Jewish state is ready to defend itself against
any nation that menaces its existence.
Chorev avoided any suggestion that Israel was
contemplating a military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities — a
scenario that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is increasingly
suggesting may be necessary to stop what he says is Tehran's path toward
atomic arms.
Still, Chorev's hard-edged comments to the
International Atomic Energy Agency's annual general conference were
another reminder of the enmity between the archrivals that have led to
highly charged tensions the United States and others fear may spiral
into armed conflict.
Chorev said the Iranians were working towards
nuclear weapons on many levels, building heavy water facilities,
manufacturing plutonium for military purposes, and trying to develop a
nuclear warhead for their long range Shihab-3 missiles.
Iran denies any interest in owning nuclear
weapons. It says it is enriching uranium solely to make reactor fuel and
for medical research. But Israel, which is widely considered to have
such arms, asserts that Tehran wants ultimately to enrich to levels
higher than reactor grade to create weapons-grade material used to arm
warheads.
Israel, the U.S. and allies of the two nations
have provided intelligence to the IAEA on alleged Iranian nuclear
weapons research and development, and while Iran dismisses the
intelligence as fabricated, the IAEA takes the allegations seriously.
Alluding to Iranian statements questioning
Israel's right to exist, Chorev warned that Israel "does not remain
indifferent in view of such direct and blunt threats."
"Israel is competent to deter its enemies and to defend itself," he told the meeting.
It has been Israel, however, that has done the
most recent threatening. Arguing that diplomatic efforts and economic
penalties have had no effect, hard-liners say a military strike may be
the only alternative to stopping Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
Netanyahu, a proponent of such an option, made
a direct appeal to American voters on Sunday to elect a president
willing to draw a "red line" with Iran.
In the past week, Netanyahu has urged U.S.
President Barack Obama and other world leaders to state clearly at what
point Iran would face a military attack. But Obama and his top aides,
while repeatedly saying that all options remain on the table, have
pointed to shared U.S.-Israeli intelligence that suggests that Iran has
not decided yet whether to build a bomb, despite pursuing the
technology, and that there will be time for action beyond the toughened
sanctions already in place.
Seeking to prove Israel wrong, and to blunt
the possibility of a Middle East war, the U.S. and five other world
powers are attempting to revive stalled high-level nuclear talks with
Iran that were downgraded after a Moscow meeting in June ended without
resolving a stalemate carried over from previous negotiations.
A Western diplomat told The Associated Press
on Wednesday that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would meet
with the foreign ministers of Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany
on Sept. 27 on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly. They are to
review the results of talks Tuesday in Istanbul between EU foreign
policy chief Catherine Ashton and top Iranian nuclear negotiator Saeed
Jalili.
The diplomat, who demanded anonymity, said
Jalili "expressed huge interest in the (negotiating) process" at that
meeting. Ashton, in turn, said that the Iranians "have to move and make
progress" on demands that they curb uranium enrichment that is above
reactor fuel grade levels, particularly at their underground facility in
Fordo, southwest of Tehran, which is most resistant to bomb and missile
attacks
Iran has resisted any attempt to limit its
enrichment activities, saying it has a right to enrich for peaceful
purposes under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
In Istanbul earlier Wednesday, Jalili offered
few concrete details about the meeting, but said he and Ashton had
assessed "common points" reached by technical teams looking into the
issue, and had discussed "what can be done for a new cooperation."
Beyond criticizing Iran for its nuclear
defiance, the U.S. and Israel also accuse the Islamic republic of
military support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Chorev, the
Israeli nuclear chief, said Wednesday that Iran's "fingerprints are
manifested in Syria" in Assad's attempt to put down the increasingly
violent insurgency, which has left more than 27,000 dead.
Like Iran, Syria is also under IAEA
investigation for allegedly hiding a nuclear program. The probe was
sparked by a 2007 Israeli airstrike that the U.S. says destroyed a
nearly finished reactor that would have produced plutonium. Like
enriched uranium, plutonium can be used to make warheads.
Denying any clandestine nuclear work, Bassam
Sabbagh, Syria's chief IAEA envoy, took Israel to task for threatening
Iran, its ally, and described the Jewish state's undeclared nuclear
program as posing "a threat to the region's security and stability."
Israel hit back by saying Syria and its ally
Iran were "known for their clandestine pursuit of nuclear weapons and
other weapons of mass destruction."
Meanwhile, Middle East Quartet envoy Tony Blair told
Israeli Labor party chairman Shelly Yachimovich that the Iranian threat
was a "global issue."
News Agencies and Israel Hayom Staff
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=5845
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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