Israel Matzav

Arabs pushing to single out Israeli nukes, US not pleased

It's been a wild day and after this I am going back to work....

The Arab countries are pushing for an IAEA resolution demanding that Israel sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (and thereby expose whether we have had nuclear weapons for the last 50 years), and the United States is not pleased about it.

Frustrated over the postponement of an international conference on ridding the region of atomic arms, Arab states have proposed a resolution at a UN nuclear agency meeting expressing concern about "Israeli nuclear capabilities".

The non-binding text submitted for the first time since 2010 to this week's member meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency calls on Israel to join a global anti-nuclear weapons pact and place its atomic facilities under IAEA monitoring.

Israel is widely believed to possess the Middle East's only nuclear arsenal, drawing frequent Arab and Iranian condemnation. It has never acknowledged having atomic weapons.

US 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.

Washington is committed to working toward a Middle East zone free of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and their delivery systems, the US envoy to the IAEA said.

But the Arab resolution "does not advance our shared goal of progress toward a WMD-free zone in the Middle East," Ambassador Joseph Macmanus said in a comment emailed to Reuters.

"Instead, it undermines efforts at constructive dialogue toward that common objective," Macmanus added.

Am I the only one who suspects that the Obama administration is secretly pleased about this resolution, but doesn't feel it can say so?

Labels: IAEA, Iranian nuclear threat, Israeli nuclear capability, nuclear-free Middle East, weapons of mass destruction

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:29 PM