by Reuters and Israel Hayom Staff
Arab League representative at IAEA: world has to know that Israel is not playing a constructive role; that Israel has nuclear capability • U.S. says move may hurt broader diplomatic efforts to create Middle East zone free of weapons of mass destruction.
International Atomic Energy
Agency meeting [Archive]
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Photo credit: Reuters  |
Arab states will push ahead with a bid to
single out Israel for criticism over its assumed atomic arsenal at this
week's U.N. nuclear agency meeting, despite Western pressure to refrain
from doing so, a senior representative said on Friday.
Frustrated over the indefinite postponement
last year of an international conference on banning atomic arms in the
region, Arab states have proposed a non-binding resolution expressing
concern about "Israeli nuclear capabilities."
If adopted at the annual member state
gathering of the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency, it would call
on Israel to join a global anti-nuclear weapons treaty and place its
nuclear facilities under IAEA monitoring. Diplomats expect a close vote.
The United States said this week the move
would hurt broader diplomatic efforts towards creating a Middle East
zone free of weapons of mass destruction. Israel said it would deal a
"serious blow" to any attempt to hold regional security talks.
But Ambassador Ramzy Ezzeldin Ramzy, head of
the Arab League group at the IAEA, made clear the text would not be
withdrawn before a vote expected later on Friday. "The world has to know
that Israel is not playing a constructive role, that Israel has a
[nuclear] capability," Ramzy said.
Israel is widely believed to possess the
Middle East's only nuclear arsenal, drawing frequent Arab and Iranian
condemnation. It has never acknowledged having nuclear weapons.
U.S. and Israeli officials -- who see Iran's
atomic activity as the main proliferation threat -- have said a nuclear
arms-free zone in the Middle East could not be a reality until there was
broad Arab-Israeli peace and Iran curbed its program.
Israel and the United States accuse Iran of covertly seeking a nuclear arms capability, something the Islamic state denies.
Iran this week said Israel's nuclear activities "seriously threaten regional peace and security."
World powers agreed in 2010 to an Egyptian
plan for an international meeting to lay the groundwork for creating a
Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction.
But the U.S., one of the big powers to
co-sponsor the meeting, said late last year it would not take place as
planned last December and did not suggest a new date.
Arab diplomats said they refrained from
putting forward the resolution on Israel at the 2011 and 2012 IAEA
meetings to boost the chances of the Middle East conference but it had
no effect.
"We have engaged seriously and constructively
in the preparations [for the conference]. The Israelis have been playing
for time, delaying, we have never seen enough seriousness on their
part," Ramzy said.
Israel's atomic energy chief, Shaul Chorev, told this
week's IAEA meeting that Arab states were using it as a platform for
"repeatedly bashing" his country. The Arab move only deepens "existing
distrust" among the region's countries, he said.
Reuters and Israel Hayom Staff
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=12109
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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