American dilemma

The U.S. supports a document calling for a nuclear-free West Asia at the NPT Review Conference and then says the decision was a mistake.

ONE of the issues that dominated the proceedings at the month-long Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference in New York in May was Israel's so-called nuclear ambiguity. During the course of the conference, an overwhelming majority of the delegates forcefully argued that the nuclear-armed Israel should be asked to sign the 40-year-old accord.

Reflecting the majority view, the final document, adopted at the end of the conference, called on Israel to sign the NPT and place all its nuclear facilities under comprehensive safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The document also called for the elimination of all weapons of mass destruction (WMD), including chemical and biological weapons, from the West Asian region.

For the first time, the United States went along with the international consensus and became a signatory to the document. On previous occasions, the U.S. had worked from behind the scenes to omit any references to Israel or its nuclear programme. This time, the Arab nations insisted that West Asia be declared a nuclear-free zone. The creation of a WMD-free zone will leave Israel with no option but to give up on its arsenal of deadly weapons.

U.S. President Barack Obama has been preaching non-proliferation at all his international stops. There was the danger of the NPT conference being derailed if U.S. continued with its old practice of vetoing all documents that compromised Israel's nuclear ambiguity. However, despite strenuous opposition from Israel, Obama chose to go along with the final document, which explicitly stated, for the first time, that the West Asian region should be declared nuclear-free.

To add to Israel's discomfiture, the NPT Review Conference called for an international conference in 2012 with the aim of establishing a nuclear-free West Asia. The declaration called on the United Nations Secretary-General and also the U.S., Russia and the United Kingdom to name a facilitator to organise the 2012 conference. Under an NPT Action Plan announced during the conference, the five recognised nuclear powers the U.S., Russia, the U.K., France and China committed themselves to speeding up the disarmament process and reporting on the progress in 2014. Ever since the NPT came into force in 1970, the major powers have been paying lip service about reducing their arsenals and establishing nuclear-free zones.

Israel, for that matter, has sworn that it will never initial the NPT; at the same time, it has called for the strengthening of the NPT regime to punish alleged rogue proliferators such as Iran and Syria. Apart from Israel, India and Pakistan, both de facto nuclear powers, have so far refused to sign the NPT, describing it as discriminatory. North Korea walked out of the NPT in 2003. All other nations are signatories to the NPT.

The NPT disarmament obligations are not confined to a handful of countries such as Iran, Syria and North Korea. Article VI of the NPT Treaty specifically calls on the nuclear nations to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to the cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date, and to nuclear disarmament under strict and effective international control. Many of the nuclear-weapons states are, however, expanding their nuclear arsenals. The U.S. Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) published this year shows that the U.S. is actually strengthening its nuclear force. It has added an even more lethal conventional deterrent to its armoury that can strike any target in the world within an hour's time.

The message to Israel and the U.S. from the NPT Review Conference is loud and clear. There cannot be double standards adopted all the time. While intense pressure is being put on Iran on the nuclear issue, Israel, which has the biggest nuclear arsenal in the region, has been allowed to replenish it, fuelling the volatility of the region.

The Cuban leader Fidel Castro, in his recent pronouncements, has said that there is the real danger of a nuclear war breaking out in West Asia. Some hawkish politicians in Israel and the U.S. have been urging the use of nuclear weapons against Iran.

Though the U.S. was a signatory to the document, its National Security Adviser James Jones was quick to deplore the inclusion of Israel in it. He added that it was equally deplorable that there was no mention of Iran's nuclear ambitions in the document. Jones said that the goal of a nuclear-free West Asia could be achieved only after the Arabs had made their peace with Israel.

To reassure Israel, Obama told visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the first week of July that the U.S. strongly opposed the move to single out Israel on the issue of non-proliferation. He added that the greatest threat to proliferation was Iran's failure to live up to its NPT commitments. More ominously, a statement released by his administration during the Netanyahu visit bestowed upon Israel the inherent right to possess nuclear weapons for purposes of deterrence. Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter has said that the tiny Jewish state possesses 200-300 nuclear warheads.

The joint statement issued after the visit stated that Obama told Netanyahu that he recognises that Israel must always have the ability to defend itself, by itself, against any threats or possible continuation of threats, and that only Israel can determine its security needs. Officials in the Obama administration now say that the support for a nuclear-free West Asia at the NPT conference was a mistake.

Obama's volte-face was evident. He stated that both sides discussed issues that arose out of the NPT Conference during Netanyahu's visit. And I reiterated to the Prime Minister that there is no change in U.S. policy when it comes to these issues. We strongly believe that given its size, the region that it is in, and the threats that are levelled against it, Israel has unique security requirements, he proclaimed.

Double standards

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, speaking at a summit of D-8 countries in Abuja, Nigeria, was quick to react to the latest show of double standards by the Obama administration. He said that talks on Iran's atomic programme could resume only after the U.S. clarified its stand on Israel's nuclear programme.

The first condition is that they should express their views about the nuclear weapons of the Zionist regime. Do they agree with that or not. If they agree that these bombs should be available to them, the course of the dialogue would be different, he told the media in the Nigerian capital. The Iranian President added that the U.S. should clarify its own commitment to the goal of non-proliferation and its readiness to resort to the use of force against his country.

It should be remembered that in the 1970s and 1980s Israel closely collaborated with the apartheid regime in South Africa in nuclear matters when there was an international embargo against that country. It was widely known that South Africa too had the capacity to produce a nuclear weapon during the days of the racist regime. A recently published book, Israel's Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa, written by Sasha Polakow-Suransky, a senior editor at Foreign Affairs, examines this. The book, which relies on declassified South African documents, reveals that Israel had offered to sell nuclear-capable Jericho missiles to the racist government.

The book quotes a senior Israeli politician, Elazar Granot, who served on the Israeli Parliament's Defence Committee in the 1980s, that the South Africans did substantial work for Israel's military and nuclear programmes. South Africa supplied uranium to Israel. Israel reciprocated, according to the author, by selling tritium to the apartheid regime. Tritium is used in more advanced nuclear weapons. This fact was revealed to the author by none other than Fannie Botha, the then South African Minister of Mines.

Meanwhile, reports are emerging that the U.S., despite its recent posturing, is moving forward with plans to strengthen Israel's nuclear weapons stockpile. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz has broken a story that chronicles in detail the nuclear cooperation between the Jewish state and its patron. Forbes magazine has reported that 22 tonnes of uranium-235, a key material used to make nuclear bombs, was diverted from U.S. laboratories to Israel.

A March 2010 audit by two former employees of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, published in The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, reveals that 337 tonnes of highly enriched uranium procured by a company called Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC) from the U.S. is still unaccounted for. NUMEC was a front for the Israeli government. The former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) station chief in Tel Aviv had described NUMEC as an Israeli operation from the beginning.