Nuclear weaponsU.S. may support nuke conference proposal challenging Israel’s nuclear program
Israeli officials expressed concerns that the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference, which ends today in New York after month-long deliberations, will approve decisions which would pose a major challenge to Israel’s unacknowledged nuclear weapons program. Arab states have already tried, in previous Review Conferences, to push for resolutions calling for making the Middle East a WMD-free zone, in effect, requiring Israel, the only nuclear-armed state in the region, to disarm. Israel’s position, supported by the United States and other countries, is that the nuclear arms issue should be dealt with as only one element of the regional security context. Until the 2010 Review Conference – these conferences meet every five years – the United States, acting on understandings reached between Richard Nixon and Golda Meir in September 1969, supported Israel’s position without much quibbling. In 2010, however, there appeared to be differences emerging between Israel’s and the U.S. approach to regional nuclear disarmament. Israel is worried that the United States, now in negotiations with Iran over the latter’s nuclear program, would support a Spanish compromise proposal which, in Israel’s view, is too close to Egypt’s original proposal which Israel finds unacceptable.
Israeli officials expressed their concerns that the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference, which ends today in New York after month-long deliberations, will approve decisions which would pose a major challenge to Israel’s unacknowledged nuclear weapons program. Arab states have already tried, in previous Review Conferences, to push for resolutions calling for making the Middle East a WMD-free zone, in effect, requiring Israel, the only nuclear-armed state in the region, to disarm.
On the agenda of this year’s Review Conference has been a proposal by Arab states to convene a regional conference on making the Middle East a nuclear weapons-free zone.
Bloomberg View reports that early on in the Review Conference, Egypt submitted a proposal for a regional conference on making the Middle East a nuclear-free zone – mandating that this conference be convene with or without Israel as a participant. The Egyptian proposal also called for making Israel’s nuclear program the main focus of the regional conference.
Israel’s position, supported by the United States and other countries, is that the nuclear arms issue should be dealt with as only one element of the regional security context, which also includes terrorism and the spread of missile technology. Another Israeli condition is that the regional conference’s agenda must be agreed on by all the participants in the conference.
Late last week Spain took it upon itself to bridge the differences between Israel and Egypt, and after consulting with both sides, presented a compromise proposal which said that if no consensus on the regional conference’s agenda is reached before December 2015, the UN secretary general will be empowered to decide whether to convene the conference, and on what terms.
Israel sees the Spanish proposal as too close to the Egyptian proposal, since it holds out the possibility that the regional conference would convened, and its agenda determined, even if there is no consensus among the participants.
A senior Israeli official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was discussing sensitive diplomatic issues, told Bloomberg View that “The adoption of such a resolution [the Spanish proposal] would contradict a U.S. commitment made to Israel as publicly stated in 2010 by President Obama and then National Security Adviser James Jones.”