Israel may come under new pressure next month at a UN meeting on atomic weapons as the US, Britain and France consider backing Egypt’s call for a zone in the Middle East free of nuclear arms, envoys said.
The 189 signatories to the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) will meet at UN headquarters in New York for a May 3 to May 28 conference on the troubled pact, the credibility of which analysts say has been undermined by the atomic programs of Iran and North Korea and the failure of the big nuclear powers to disarm.
Israel, like India and Pakistan, never signed the treaty and is not officially attending the conference. The Jewish state is presumed to have a sizable nuclear arsenal, although it has never confirmed or denied having atomic weapons.
The NPT review conferences take place every five years. At the 1995 meeting, member states unanimously supported a resolution backing the idea of “a Middle East zone free of nuclear weapons as well as other weapons of mass destruction.”
In a working paper Egypt submitted to fellow treaty members ahead of next month’s meeting, Cairo said the conference should formally express regret that “no progress has taken place on the implementation of the [1995] resolution” and call for an international treaty conference by 2011.
The point of such a conference would be “to launch negotiations, with the participation of all states of the Middle East, on an internationally and effectively verifiable treaty for the establishment of a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the Middle East,” the Egyptian paper said.
Egyptian initiatives at NPT meetings are nothing new, but Western diplomats familiar with the issue said the five permanent UN. Security Council members — the US, Britain, France, China and Russia — might be ready to support such a conference, although not with a negotiating mandate.
Diplomats said the three Western powers might also encourage Israel to participate, although their position was that there could be no mandate for negotiating such a treaty now, when many countries in the region refuse to recognize Israel.
Backing from the five permanent Security Council members — the NPT’s five official nuclear powers — would help ensure broad support for Egypt’s plan next month.
One Western envoy said Egypt’s insistence on a conference with a negotiating mandate was the main “sticking point,” while another expressed the hope that Egypt would compromise during intensive negotiations on the issue in the coming weeks.
But Egypt’s UN Ambassador Maged Abdelaziz said the real sticking point was Israel’s reluctance to participate.
“We want the Israelis to sit at a table and negotiate,” he said.
“We’re flexible on the location and the format of the conference,” Abdelaziz said, adding that one possible idea was to have UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon oversee it.
Western diplomats said US willingness to entertain the idea of supporting such a conference highlighted the sharp shift in Washington’s approach to Israel under President Barack Obama.
US support for a regional nuclear conference could further alienate the Israelis at a time when relations are already tense due to disagreements over Israel’s settlements policy in occupied areas the Palestinians want for a state.
One Western diplomat said the Israelis were “understandably reluctant” to take part, even if the conference’s outcome would be merely symbolic. However, it would be difficult to refuse if Washington began to put pressure on the Israelis, he said.
BLOODSHED: North Koreans take extreme measures to avoid being taken prisoner and sometimes execute their own forces, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Saturday said that Russian and North Korean forces sustained heavy losses in fighting in Russia’s southern Kursk region. Ukrainian and Western assessments say that about 11,000 North Korean troops are deployed in the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces occupy swathes of territory after staging a mass cross-border incursion in August last year. In his nightly video address, Zelenskiy quoted a report from Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi as saying that the battles had taken place near the village of Makhnovka, not far from the Ukrainian border. “In battles yesterday and today near just one village, Makhnovka,
Russia and Ukraine have exchanged prisoners of war in the latest such swap that saw the release of hundreds of captives and was brokered with the help of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), officials said on Monday. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that 189 Ukrainian prisoners, including military personnel, border guards and national guards — along with two civilians — were freed. He thanked the UAE for helping negotiate the exchange. The Russian Ministry of Defense said that 150 Russian troops were freed from captivity as part of the exchange in which each side released 150 people. The reason for the discrepancy in numbers
The foreign ministers of Germany, France and Poland on Tuesday expressed concern about “the political crisis” in Georgia, two days after Mikheil Kavelashvili was formally inaugurated as president of the South Caucasus nation, cementing the ruling party’s grip in what the opposition calls a blow to the country’s EU aspirations and a victory for former imperial ruler Russia. “We strongly condemn last week’s violence against peaceful protesters, media and opposition leaders, and recall Georgian authorities’ responsibility to respect human rights and protect fundamental freedoms, including the freedom to assembly and media freedom,” the three ministers wrote in a joint statement. In reaction
BARRIER BLAME: An aviation expert questioned the location of a solid wall past the end of the runway, saying that it was ‘very bad luck for this particular airplane’ A team of US investigators, including representatives from Boeing, on Tuesday examined the site of a plane crash that killed 179 people in South Korea, while authorities were conducting safety inspections on all Boeing 737-800 aircraft operated by the country’s airlines. All but two of the 181 people aboard the Boeing 737-800 operated by South Korean budget airline Jeju Air died in Sunday’s crash. Video showed the aircraft, without its landing gear deployed, crash-landed on its belly and overshoot a runaway at Muan International Airport before it slammed into a barrier and burst into flames. The plane was seen having engine trouble.
RSS