Israel Fears Obama Will Stop Hiding Nuclear ‘Secret’

2
>>Follow Matzav On Whatsapp!<<

ISRAELBy Eli Lake

The Israeli government is worried the Obama administration will allow a U.N. conference this week to adopt a resolution that could compel Israel to acknowledge its nuclear arsenal.

At issue is a proposal at the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference that would empower the U.N. secretary general to organize a conference to pursue a Middle East free of nukes and other weapons of mass destruction.

Israel is one of three nuclear states (along with Pakistan and India) that have not signed the treaty. But unlike Pakistan and India, Israel has never formally acknowledged that it has nuclear weapons.

Egypt and other Arab states have pressed for a nuclear-free Middle East zone at this conference since the 1990s. In 2010, for the first time, the conference adopted language that laid out the first steps for achieving this zone. But to move forward and hold a conference on keeping nukes out of the Middle East, the group needed consensus support from the United States, Russia and Britain, three of five countries that the treaty acknowledges to have nukes. There was no consensus.

But this time it’s different. The Spanish delegation this year proposes letting the U.N. secretary general convene a conference on a nuclear-free Middle East, even without consensus support. In essence it would mean that Israel’s most important ally, the United States, would not be able to block the convention.

A senior Israeli government official Wednesday evening told me, “Israel is increasingly concerned that the United States is not going to prevent the NPT review conference currently meeting in New York from adopting a resolution on the Middle East that would jeopardize Israel’s national security.”

Bernadatte Meehan, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council, disputed this. She told me there was no final text on the Middle East conference, “but we are working to ensure that it meets our interests and those of Israel.”

She added: “Both the United States and Israel support the creation of a WMD-free zone in the Middle East. We are working closely with our Israeli partners to advance our mutual interests, including preserving the NPT.”

The resolution that Israel fears would likely lead to a conference that would formally disclose one of the Middle East’s worst-kept secrets: Israeli nuclear weapons. Henry Sokolski, the executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, told me, “The conference wouldn’t immediately lead to the disarmament of Israel, but it would immediately require a discussion and admission of the existence of these weapons.”

The senior Israeli official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was discussing sensitive diplomatic issues, said of the Spanish proposal, “The adoption of such a resolution would contradict a U.S. commitment made to Israel as publicly stated in 2010 by President Obama and then National Security Adviser James Jones.”

Meehan said this was not happening. “This administration and this president do not break commitments to our Israeli partners, and any suggestion to the contrary is offensive,” she said.

Read more at Bloomberg View.

{Matzav.com Newscenter}


2 COMMENTS

  1. It doesn’t matter israel is not iran they never joined the npt. Iran joined that’s why the are held accountable while israel didn’t and israel can do whatever they want.

Leave a Reply to Anonymous Cancel reply

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here