nuclear-news

Israel’s nuclear weapons status is critical to Non Proliferation conference

Israel Key To Conference On Banning Nuclear Weapons, THE HUFFINGTON POST,  by Edith M. Lederer, 29 May 2010, UNITED NATIONS — After 15 years, Arab nations finally won agreement from the United States and the other nuclear powers to take the first step toward banning nuclear weapons from the Middle East. Now the next move is Israel’s. But the Israeli government rejected the resolution Saturday, calling it “deeply flawed and hypocritical.”Although the U.S. joined the 188 other member nations of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty on Friday in giving a green light to a conference in 2012 “on the establishment of a Middle East zone free of nuclear weapons and all other weapons of mass destruction,” senior U.S. officials appeared to backtrack afterward, setting several conditions for the talks to go ahead…….

The Arab proposal for a WMD-free zone – to pressure Israel to give up its undeclared arsenal of perhaps 80 nuclear warheads – was endorsed by the 1995 NPT conference but never acted on. At this month’s NPT review, a conference to begin talks on a nuclear-free Mideast was considered by many delegates as “the make-or-break issue,” and agreement on the 2012 meeting was widely welcomed after the 28-page final declaration was approved by consensus.

But the U.S. reaction raised questions and doubts about whether Israel, Iran and other countries in the Mideast will even hold a meeting in two years.

Israel Key To Conference On Banning Nuclear Weapons

June 1, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Israel, weapons and war | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear weapons