SYDNEY - Israel's nuclear weapons are an obstacle to peace in the Middle East, the head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog said in an interview published Tuesday.
Advertisement
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) head Mohammed ElBaradei said the nuclear arsenal should go as part of a settlement with the Palestinians.
"This is not really sustainable that you have Israel sitting with nuclear weapons capability there while everyone else is part of the non-proliferation regime," ElBaradei told The Sydney Morning Herald.
ElBaradei said Muslims in the surrounding region resented Israel's nuclear arsenal and wanted it to be part of the non-proliferation program.
"It is a very emotional issue in the Middle East," ElBaradei said.
The IAEA director general is the keynote speaker at a conference in Sydney organized by the Australian government to discuss safeguards to prevent nuclear material falling into the hands of terrorists. Delegates from 30 countries are attending the conference.
ElBaradei told the newspaper that he was encouraged by Iran's provisional agreement to suspend the enrichment and reprocessing of uranium at weekend talks with officials from Britain, France and Germany.
But he warned that getting Tehran to give up any ambition to develop nuclear weapons would depend on whether Israel was brought into the equation.
"In my view, in the Middle East you are facing two options," he said. "Either we will have in the next 10, 20 years three or four countries trying to acquire nuclear weapons, and, worse, have extremist groups trying to get their hands on nuclear devices, or you can try to build a security structure that's built on confidence, cooperation and trust."
Commenting on Israel's stance that a comprehensive peace settlement must be in place before nuclear disarmament could go ahead, ElBaradei recommended a compromise.
"My take on this is that we will probably need to do the two together in tandem," he said. "You need a security structure to undergird, if you like, protect, that peace process."
ElBaradei said the international community should not be exerting pressure on Israel to disarm but should be pushing forward a plan that would have disarmament as part of a comprehensive Middle East peace.
"I don't think it's a matter of pressure," ElBaradei said. "It's a question of providing Israel with a credible alternative that they are better off without nuclear weapons."
Haaretz.com, the online edition of Haaretz Newspaper in Israel, offers real-time breaking news, opinions and analysis from Israel and the Middle East. Haaretz.com provides extensive and in-depth coverage of Israel, the Jewish World and the Middle East, including defense, diplomacy, the Arab-Israeli conflict, the peace process, Israeli politics, Jerusalem affairs, international relations, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, the Palestinian Authority, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the Israeli business world and Jewish life in Israel and the Diaspora.
