by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu May 4 2010 / 20 Iyyar,5770 http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/137360
Ellen Tauscher, U.S. Undersecretary of State for arms control, was quoted by the London Guardian as saying last week, "The best chance we have to achieve a WMD-free zone in the Middle East is to reach an agreement on a lasting and just peace in the Middle East." A proposal for a ban on mass destruction weapons in the Middle East is being circulated by the Obama administration and Russia.
Egypt also is circulating a proposal that links removing nuclear weapons from Israel with eliminating the Iranian threat to become a nuclear power. Egyptian Ambassador to the United Nations Maged A. Abdelaziz said last week, “Success in dealing with Iran will depend to a large extent on how successfully we deal with the establishment of a nuclear-free zone" in the Middle East, meaning Israel.
Cairo also is using its “Israel card” to refuse to participate in the chemical weapons convention, arguing that Israel first must sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT).
Israel’s “ambiguity” policy does not admit or confirm that it has nuclear weapons. It has declined to sign the NPT, which would require opening up state secrets on nuclear capability.
The United Nations this week opened its NPT conference and heard Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad charge, “The Zionist regime continues to threaten the countries of the Middle East with its arsenal. It continues to threaten the world's countries with acts of terror and invasion, and even gets the necessary assistance for its nuclear program.”
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton revealed to the conference Monday that the United States has 5,113 nuclear weapons, nearly 50 percent less than most estimates.
However, she did not disclose how many weapons have long-range capability. The United States and Russia have “enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world many times over,” she said. American officials noted that the United States has reduced its nuclear capability by 84 percent since the mid-1960s and 90 percent since 1991.
Revealing the classified information in the American nuclear arsenal is designed at putting pressure on China to do the same.
An American-inspired Middle East peace, with Israel at the core, remains in the background of the official statements. Besides the Russian-American proposal, Egypt’s position paper calls for countries signing the non-proliferation treaty "to disclose all information available to them on the nature and scope of Israeli nuclear capabilities, including information pertaining to previous nuclear transfers to Israel."
The proposal is buried in its working paper being circulated in New York, according to the Washington Post’s Walter Pincus.
Pincus noted, “How the Obama administration deals with the nettlesome problem of Israel's nuclear arsenal and the establishment of a nuclear-weapons-free zone in the Middle East will determine U.S. success or failure at the NPT conference.”
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu May 4 2010 / 20 Iyyar,5770 http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/137363
Listen to statements by former US ambassador to UN John Bolton
“All of us know this suggestion [of Egypt] relates to one country - Israel,” Bolton stated. "The question right now is how much pressure he is prepared to apply to achieve his objective. If I were an Israeli, I would be afraid of the results of these contacts because of the very fact that Obama agrees to talk with Egypt” about its proposal.
“It is clear that we are talking about an absurd and very aggravating” action by President Obama, “but this is how it has worked for years since the days of Castro, and the ‘shining” period of [Yasser] Arafat,” Bolton told Army Radio.
He also said he is not surprised that the “head of an enemy state can arrive in the United States, take the podium in the center of New York, castigate the United States and Israel and accuse them of mutual nuclear aid.
“This really is not an exceptional step for the U.N. to give the podium to the president of Iran. The best thing I can say about the visit of Ahmadinejad is that his speech was so ridiculous that he actually damages himself more than he does himself any good.”
Calling the United Nations an organization “empty of all content” that “lost its legitimacy a long time ago,” Bolton suggested the establishment of an alternative body comprising only those countries that are democratic.
“There needs to be a wide-ranging discussion on the lack of effectiveness of the United Nations in dealing with international challenges,” he explained. “In its history, it has failed time after time to deal with global threats. This happened with Communism and today it is happening with worldwide terror.”
He dismissed the U.N. committee for preventing the spread of nuclear weapons as another “great name of an organization that has no teeth or significance."
Bolton, who advised then-President George W. Bush to stop paying dues to the United Nations, quit his U.N. post out of frustration.
The Obama administration disclosed the size of its atomic stockpile going back to 1962 as part of a campaign to get other nuclear nations – including Israel – to be more forthcoming. Speaking to reporters at the United Nations, where she had addressed a conference on containing the spread of atomic weapons, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, "We think it is in our national security interest to be as transparent as we can be about the nuclear program of the United States."
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