Israel rejects international conference on nuclear-free Middle East

By Amir Oren, Haaretz – 20 Sept 2012

Israel expressed its strong opposition on Wednesday to an Arab initiative, supported by the Obama administration, to hold a conference that would debate the possibility of a nuclear-free Middle East.  The conference would take place in Helsinki toward the end of 2012, or early in 2013. Brig.Gen. (Res.) Shaul Horev, director of the Israeli Nuclear Energy Committee, who reports directly to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, immediately trashed the idea.

Israel's nuclear WMDs have been ignored by the Western powers*President Barack Obama had promised to promote the move at the 2010 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

Horev expressed Israeli opposition at the 56th general convention of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, saying that the idea of a nuclear arms-free Middle East, which been met with reservations by Israel, was now even less possible, due to the "volatile and hostile situation" in the area.

Full report in Haaretz 20 September 2012

 

*When SPSC first published this cartoon, Scottish Zionists reported it to a Westminster Parliament Committee as 'anti-Semitic'