Israel urged Arab nations on Wednesday to abandon a push to have it declared a menace to peace at a 139-nation meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency, suggesting Iran’s suspect nuclear programs posed the real threat to the Middle East.
Gideon Frank, the head of Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission and Israel’s chief delegate to the IAEA’s general conference, was responding
to preparations by Arab countries to present a resolution stating that Israel’s secretive atomic program threatened Middle East peace.
Israel “will not be in a position to support” a separate resolution urging all Middle East nations to throw open their nuclear program to IAEA controls unless the plan to table a text on an Israeli threat is dropped, he said.
Arab nations at the annual conference regularly threaten to submit a resolution labeling Israel’s nuclear capabilities a threat to Middle East peace but have traditionally dropped such plans, settling instead for a statement of the conference president with relatively neutral language that carries much less weight than a resolution.
Of the “many alarming proliferation developments in the Middle East ... none of these involve Israel,” said Frank, criticizing the “alarming attitude of some regional states to their international commitments in the nuclear domain.
While not mentioning Iran by name, he linked “alarming proliferation developments in the Middle East” to the topics of recent resolutions by the IAEA board of governors and reports by IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei.
The draft on the Middle East to be submitted later this week only alludes to Israel, expressing concern about “the presence in the Middle East region of nuclear activities not wholly devoted to peaceful purposes.
In contrast, any resolution being considered by Arab states would be much harsher, and based on a letter submitted by Oman on behalf of 15 Arab IAEA member states, stating that “Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons is likely to lead to a destructive nuclear arms race in the region.”
Ramzy Ramzy, Egypt’s chief representative to the IAEA, urged ElBaradei to put pressure on Israel to allow an outside view of its nuclear activities as a first step toward establishment of a Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction. Morocco’s chief representative, Omar Zniber, said Israel’s refusal to open its program to IAEA perusal is “a serious obstacle to ... Just and lasting peace” In the region.
RSS
