Egypt:Egypt criticised the European Union yesterday for failing to support a UN atomic watchdog resolution calling on all Middle East nations to renounce atomic weapons - a clear reference to Israel's undeclared arsenal.
In New York, Egyptian foreign minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit warned of a potential nuclear arms race in the Middle East, saying Israel was as much a concern as Iran.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) passed the resolution with a 53-2 vote on Thursday, but 47 abstentions by western and developing states exposed reservations that the move politicised the UN agency's work.
The Egyptian foreign ministry singled out EU states in its criticism for the lack of western support for the nonbinding resolution, which highlighted Arab frustration about Israel's presumed nuclear might.
"The European Union movement was a clear contradiction with the principles it claims to defend regarding nuclear disarmament and the prevention of nuclear proliferation," the official Middle East News Agency quoted a ministry statement as saying.
Israel is widely believed to have the region's only nuclear arsenal. The Jewish state has never confirmed or denied it.
Speaking at the council on foreign relations, an influential think tank in New York, where he will attend the UN General Assembly next week, Aboul Gheit warned about a potential nuclear arms race in the region.
"It is a scary thing to allow the Middle East to witness the mushrooming of one or two or three nuclear capable states," he said. He declined to answer whether, if Iran were to obtain a nuclear weapon, Egypt would seek the same capability.
The US and other western countries suspect Iran is trying to develop a nuclear weapon, although Tehran denies this.
Aboul Gheit said Egypt's call for a nuclear-free Middle East was not addressed only to Iran. "I'm talking about Israel," he said.
A similar resolution urging all Middle East nations to adopt IAEA safeguards on nuclear work passed overwhelmingly at last year's agency general assembly, with only Israel and the US opposed, as they were again on Thursday.
Egypt reintroduced the resolution this year seeking full consensus but attached two new clauses that prompted Israel to demand a vote and European, other western and non-aligned developing nations to abstain.
One clause urged all nations in the Middle East, pending creation of a nuclear weapons-free zone, not to make or test nuclear arms or let them be deployed on their soil. The other urged big nuclear powers not to foil such a step.
European diplomats said their missions abstained because, while they backed universal IAEA non-proliferation controls in the region, the amended resolution flouted the agency's non-political ethos and sought to isolate a member state.
Meanwhile, the US and France yesterday stressed their diplomatic efforts to end Iran's suspected nuclear arms programme as major powers met in Washington to discuss possible new UN sanctions against Tehran.
French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner, who on Sunday raised the spectre of war with Iran but has since backed away from the comment, emphasised European talks with Tehran as well as the possibility of fresh UN Security Council or EU sanctions against Iran.
"It is important to note that we have set out a diplomatic path that includes negotiation as the preferred means by which to resolve this issue," US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice told reporters at a joint news conference with Mr Kouchner.
- (Reuters)