Group items tagged

While the US has never admitted that its ally Israel has nuclear weapons, the last Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert admitted last year to the existence of the arsenal. Anti-nuclear whistle blower Mordechai Vanunu spent eighteen years in Israeli prison for exposing the Israeli nuclear program with photos and testimony. As a condition for his release he was denied the right to speak to foreigners and reporters. But the U.S. and Israel have both continued to maintain a 'don't ask, don't tell' stance toward Israel's nuclear arsenal of approximately thirty warheads. Now, assistant Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller may be breaking that taboo. She gave a speech in New York listing the countries that must adhere to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty - India, Israel, Pakistan and North Korea. By including Israel in that list, she broke a thirty year silence by U.S. officials on the existence of an Israeli nuclear arsenal.

Israel must comply with the demands of the International Atomic Energy Agency if the Mideast is to become a region free of weapons of mass destruction, Syria's foreign minister said Monday. Foreign Minister Walid Al-Moualem echoed calls by many Arab nations during the current U.N. General Assembly session for Israel to comply with the IAEA's demand to submit its nuclear facilities to the agency's safeguard regime and to adhere to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The treaty restricts any nuclear program to nonmilitary purposes. Israel has never said it has nuclear weapons, but is universally believed to possess a sizable arsenal of such warheads.

Israel must comply with the demands of the International Atomic Energy Agency if the Mideast is to become a region free of weapons of mass destruction, Syria's foreign minister said Monday. Foreign Minister Walid Al-Moualem echoed calls by many Arab nations during the current U.N. General Assembly session for Israel to comply with the IAEA's demand to submit its nuclear facilities to the agency's safeguard regime and to adhere to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The treaty restricts any nuclear program to nonmilitary purposes. Israel has never said it has nuclear weapons, but is universally believed to possess a sizable arsenal of such warheads.

"Documents reveal how then-defence minister Shimon Perez tried to sell South Africa's apartheid government the bomb Israel documents: Cover page of memo revealing secret nuclear agreement with South Africa This cover page of an ISSA (ISrael-South Africa agreement) meeting in Pretoria between Israeli and South African officials on 30 June 1975 establishes the presence of General RF Armstrong, who wrote the nuclear memo. * Minutes of third ISSA meeting, 30/6/1975 Israel documents: Memo showing secret nuclear agreement with South Africa This document details the another ISSA meeting during which Botha says he needs the 'right payload' and Peres offers it in 'three sizes' (paragraph 10). "

"Israel called "deeply flawed" and "hypocritical" a United Nations resolution ratified by 181 countries that calls for a 2012 conference on a nuclear-free Mideast, and said it would not take part in the talks. "Israel is not obligated by the decisions of this conference, which has no authority over Israel," a statement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office distributed to press travelling with him in Toronto said. "It singles out Israel, the Middle East's only true democracy and the only country threatened with annihilation," the statement said. "It ignores the realities of the Middle East and the real threats facing the region and the entire world." "

President Barack Obama's Nuclear Security Summit was a high-yield event for Israel, with little of the diplomatic fallout that made the country's leaders duck such forums in the past. But it may be only a fleeting reprieve for the decades-old, U.S.-tolerated secrecy around Israel's assumed atomic arsenal. Obama's drive to eliminate weapons of mass destruction and, more immediately, to defuse tinderbox Middle East standoffs will mean increased pressure on Israel to scrap its self-styled policy of nuclear "ambiguity" or "opacity," some analysts say.

"Israel voiced confidence on Tuesday that U.S. President Barack Obama would not challenge its long-standing policy of neither confirming nor denying it has nuclear weapons. Asked whether Israel was losing U.S. support for its policy of "nuclear ambiguity," Defense Minister Ehud Barak told Israeli Army Radio: "I don't believe so. I spoke at length with President Obama about such issues just 10 days ago." Barak met Obama and other U.S. officials in Washington against the backdrop of a U.N. review conference in New York of the parties to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which Israel has not signed."

In 1986, a young Israeli man called Mordechai Vanunu followed his conscience and told the world that Israel had a nuclear weapons programme. He was convicted of espionage and treason and sentenced to 18 years in prison. After serving this (12 years of which were in solitary confinement), Vanunu was released. In April 2004, about 80 people from around the world went to welcome him out of prison. Unbelievably, upon his release Vanunu was made subject to severe restrictions, which forbade him many basic civil liberties (including his right to leave Israel, to speak to foreigners and foreign media) and restricted his travel within Israel.

Overriding Western objections, a 150-nation nuclear conference on Friday passed a resolution directly criticizing Israel and its atomic program for the first time in 18 years. Iran hailed the vote as a "glorious moment." The result was a setback not only for Israel but also for the United States and other backers of the Jewish state, which had lobbied for 18 years of past practice - debate on the issue without a vote. It also reflected building tensions between Israel and its backers and Islamic nations, backed by developing countries. Of delegations present at the International Atomic Energy Agency meeting Friday, 49 voted for the resolution. Forty-five were against and 16 abstained from endorsing or rejecting the document, which "expresses concern about the Israeli nuclear capabilities," and links it to "concern about the threat posed by the proliferation of nuclear weapons for the security and stability of the Middle East."

"Egypt will not enjoy its sovereignty unless it has the strength to implement a just peace, and therefore developing a nuclear program is part of national security," says Dr. Rashad Al-Qubaisi, the former head of the International Center for Nuclear Weapons at the United Nations and the person responsible for preparing a report on establishing a nuclear reactor in Egypt. "I am of the opinion that possessing an atom bomb is essential if you want to enjoy power and sovereignty. I will not forget what the Indian ambassador said to me when we discovered that India was holding nuclear experiments in 1997 - 'Our national security is more important to us than water or food.'" Qubaisi, who criticizes the Egyptian government for not approving nuclear supervision in its territory, says no country in the region, including Israel, has conducted nuclear experiments because they are so simple to trace. "Israel conducts its experiments via computer simulations - impossible to detect," he says.

"Egypt will not enjoy its sovereignty unless it has the strength to implement a just peace, and therefore developing a nuclear program is part of national security," says Dr. Rashad Al-Qubaisi, the former head of the International Center for Nuclear Weapons at the United Nations and the person responsible for preparing a report on establishing a nuclear reactor in Egypt. "I am of the opinion that possessing an atom bomb is essential if you want to enjoy power and sovereignty. I will not forget what the Indian ambassador said to me when we discovered that India was holding nuclear experiments in 1997 - 'Our national security is more important to us than water or food.'" Qubaisi, who criticizes the Egyptian government for not approving nuclear supervision in its territory, says no country in the region, including Israel, has conducted nuclear experiments because they are so simple to trace. "Israel conducts its experiments via computer simulations - impossible to detect," he says.

"It was only one paragraph buried deep in the most plain-vanilla kind of diplomatic document, 40 pages of dry language committing 189 nations to a world free of nuclear weapons. But it has become the latest source of friction between Israel and the United States in a relationship that has lurched from crisis to crisis over the last few months. At an annual meeting to review the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in May, the United States yielded to demands by Arab nations that the final document urge Israel to sign the treaty - a way of spotlighting its historically undeclared nuclear weapons."

Arab nations accused Israel on Monday of blasting Gaza with ammunition containing depleted uranium and urged the International Atomic Energy Agency to investigate reports that traces of it had been found in victims of the shelling. In a letter on behalf of Arab ambassadors accredited in Austria, Prince Mansour Al-Saoud, the Saudi Ambassador, expressed "our deep concern regarding the information ... that traces of depleted uranium have been found in Palestinian victims." A final draft of the letter was made available to The Associated Press on Monday. It urgently requested IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei to "carry out a radiological and physical assessment in order to verify the presence of depleted uranium in the weaponry used by Israel ... in the Gaza Strip."

First, we went after nonexistent nuclear weapons in Iraq, and now we are consumed with the possibility that Iran might develop nuclear weapons sometime in the future. Hillary Clinton has declared that she would obliterate Iran if it ever attacked Israel with a nuclear weapon. But what nobody wants to talk about is the fact that Israel has had a secret nuclear weapons program for more than 30 years that has produced well over 200 nuclear bombs.

EL-ARISH, Egypt (AFP) - Egypt has sent back to Israel a delivery of 32 tonnes of tiles that was emitting high levels of radiation, a security official told AFP on Monday. Authorities seized the truckload of tiles on Friday after it crossed into the Sinai from Israel via a crossing near the Gaza Strip. They detected the radiation and called in nuclear experts to examine the vehicle.

Israel was linked to the interception of the missing cargo ship Arctic Sea last month, a senior figure close to Israeli intelligence has told the BBC. The source said Israel had told Moscow it knew the ship was secretly carrying a Russian air defence system for Iran. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has dismissed speculation that S-300 missiles were on board the ship. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, has denied making a secret visit to Moscow on Monday.

Inside the Nixon administration four decades ago, American officials weighed options to pressure Israel to declare that it had a nuclear weapons program. U.S. officials concluded Israel was "actively working to improve its capability to produce nuclear weapons on short notice." In an unsigned National Security Council memo, prepared sometime between April 1969 and March 1970, officials worried that the program might make elusive peace with the Arabs even harder to attain.

Obama needs to spell it out to the Israeli government: your weapons of mass destruction are just as dangerous as Iran's The surprise announcement by Rose Gottemoeller, a US assistant secretary of state, that America would like every nation - including Israel - to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) has sent shockwaves through Tel Aviv, confirming the fears (or hopes, depending on who you ask) that the Obama administration is initiating a major overhaul of its policy on nuclear proliferation in the Middle East. The Israeli government will certainly challenge the Obama administration on this issue, as Israel is not likely to ­co-operate, to put it mildly, with the state department's new logical, fair-minded approach to non-proliferation.

An Israeli official on Wednesday criticized a U.S. call to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as hard to understand, citing the pact's failure to prevent countries from obtaining atomic arms. "It is therefore hard to understand why there should be such an insistence on a treaty that has proven its inefficiency," a senior official at the Israeli Foreign Ministry said, after U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller urged Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea to join the treaty. Israel does not confirm or deny foreign reports it has what arms control experts assume to be a sizeable atomic arsenal.

After years of ignoring the Israeli nuclear program-which was denounced in 1986 by former nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu-the United States' Department of Defense has acknowledged Israel nuclear power status for the first time. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied the existence of its own nuclear arsenal, but page 37 of the US Joint Forces Command report recognizes the fact, putting it in the same group as Pakistan, India, China, North Korea, Russia, along with an "emerging Iran," Taiwan, and Japan having "the capability to develop nuclear weapons quickly."

"Two territorial partitions of the Twentieth Century have profoundly affected the Muslim world. One was the partition of India that gave the Muslim world the miracle of a major new member. The other was the partition of Palestine, which gave the Muslim world the challenge of a new adversary. Those two momentous events occurred within two consecutive years of each other - 1947 saw the birth of the Muslim state of Pakistan. In 1948 we witnessed the birth of the Jewish state of Israel. Islam in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries was never to be the same. But where does the nuclear factor fit into this complex equation? The Muslims of South Asia lived to witness the nuclearisation of their much larger and powerful neighbour, India. The Muslims of the Middle East lived to witness the nuclearisation of their small but powerful neighbour, Israel. Over time, the question even arose whether India and Israel would conspire to prevent the nuclearisation of Pakistan."

"As the world grapples with controlling the spread of nuclear weapons, it's a time of complex choices in a Middle East edging between possible confrontation with Iran and possible movement towards Israeli-Palestinian peace. It's also a time of troubled relations between the United States and Israel. And yet at this critical moment, against expectations, there was a rare confluence of interests this week between the region's closest allies. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided to skip the world nuclear conference convened by President Barack Obama in Washington. The U.S. leader may well have been quietly pleased by Netanyahu's decision to stay away and to send a lower level delegation. He had no wish to meet with Netanyahu while he's kept waiting for an answer to his demand that Israel changes policy about making peace with the Palestinians. "