- Date: Tue, 05 May 2009 23:06:57 -0400
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- The Washington Times [close_icon.gif] [print_icon.gif]
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- Wednesday, May 6, 2009
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- Secret U.S.-Israel nuclear accord in
jeopardy
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- Eli Lake
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- President Obama's efforts to curb the spread of nuclear
weapons threaten to expose and derail a 40-year-old secret U.S.
agreement to shield Israel's nuclear weapons from international
scrutiny, former and current U.S. and Israeli officials and
nuclear specialists say.
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- The issue will likely come to a head when Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with Mr. Obama on May 18 in
Washington. Mr. Netanyahu is expected to seek assurances from Mr.
Obama that he will uphold the U.S.
- commitment and will not trade Israeli nuclear concessions for
Iranian ones.
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- Assistant Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller, speaking
Tuesday at a U.N.
- meeting on the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), said
Israel should join the treaty, which would require Israel to
declare and relinquish its nuclear arsenal.
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- "Universal adherence to the NPT itself, including by India,
Israel, Pakistan and North Korea, ... remains a fundamental
objective of the United States," Ms. Gottemoeller told the
meeting, according to Reuters.
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- She declined to say, however, whether the Obama administration
would press Israel to join the treaty.
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- A senior White House official said the administration
considered the nuclear programs of Israel and Iran to be unrelated
"apples and oranges."
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- Asked by The Washington Times whether the administration would
press Israel to join the NPT, the official said, "We support
universal adherence to the NPT. [It] remains a long-term goal."
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- The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because of
the sensitivity of the issue.
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- Avner Cohen, author of "Israel and the Bomb" and the leading
expert outside the Israeli government on the history of Israel's
nuclear program, said Mr. Obama's "upcoming meeting with
Netanyahu, due to the impending discussions with Iran, will be a
platform for Israel to ask for reassurances that old
understandings on the nuclear issue are still valid."
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- For the past 40 years, Israel and the U.S. have kept quiet
about an Israeli nuclear arsenal that is now estimated at 80 to
200 weapons. Israel has promised not to test nuclear weapons while
the U.S. has not pressed Israel to sign the nuclear NPT, which
permits only five countries - the U.S., France, Britain, China and
Russia - to have nuclear arms.
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- The U.S. also has opposed most regional calls for a
"nuclear-free Middle East." The accord was forged at a summit
between Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir and President Nixon on
Sept. 25, 1969, according to recently released documents, but
remains so secret that there is no explicit record of it. Mr.
Cohen has referred to the deal as "don't ask, don't tell,"
- because it commits both the U.S. and Israel never to
acknowledge in public Israels nuclear arsenal.
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- When asked what the Obama administration's position was on the
1969 understanding, the senior White House official offered no
comment.
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- Over the years, demands for Israel to come clean have
multiplied.
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- The Iran factor
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- Iranian leaders have long complained about being subjected to
a double standard that allows non-NPT members India and Pakistan,
as well as Israel, to maintain and even increase their nuclear
arsenals but sanctions Tehran, an NPT member, for not cooperating
fully with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N.
nuclear watchdog.
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- On Monday, Iranian Deputy Foreign MinisterMohammad Ali
Hosseini told a U.N. meeting preparing for a major review of the
NPT next year that nuclear cooperation by the U.S., France and
Britain with Israel is "in total disregard with the obligations
under the treaty and commitments undertaken in 1995 and 2000, and
a source of real concern for the international community,
especially the parties to the treaty in the Middle East."
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- The Obama administration is seeking talks with Iran on its
nuclear program and has dropped a precondition for negotiations
that Iran first suspend its uranium enrichment program.
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- "What the Israelis sense, rightly, is that Obama wants to do
something new on Iran and this may very well involve doing
something new about Israel's program," said Henry Sokolski,
executive director of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy
Education Center, a Washington think tank.
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- Bruce Riedel, a former senior director for the Middle East and
South Asia on the White House National Security Council, said, "If
you're really serious about a deal with Iran, Israel has to come
out of the closet. A policy based on fiction and double standards
is bound to fail sooner or later. What's remarkable is that it's
lasted so long." Mr. Riedel headed the Obama administration's
review of strategy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan but does not
hold a permanent administration position and has returned to
private life as a scholar at the Brookings Institution.
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- The open secret
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- Elliott Abrams, deputy national security adviser for the
George W. Bush administration, said that administration resisted
international efforts to pressure Israel on the nuclear front.
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- "We did not want to accept any operational language that would
put Israel at a disadvantage and raise the question of whether
Israel was a nuclear power," he said. "That was not a discussion
that we thought was helpful.
- We allowed very general statements about the goal of a
nuclear-free Middle East as long that language was hortatory."
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- Israel began its nuclear program shortly after the state was
founded in
- 1948 and produced its first weapons, according to Mr. Cohen's
book, on the eve of the 1967 Six-Day War. Israeli defense doctrine
considers the nuclear arsenal to be a strategic deterrent against
extinction. But its nuclear monopoly is increasingly jeopardized
by Iranian advances and the possibility that Iran's program could
trigger a nuclear arms race in the region.
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- Israel's arsenal has also been an open secret for decades,
despite the fact that Israeli law forbids Israeli journalists from
referring to the state's nuclear weapons unless they quote
non-Israeli sources.
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- In 1986, the Israeli nuclear scientist, Mordecai Vanunu
disclosed in the Sunday Times of London photographs and the first
insider account of Dimona, the location of Israels primary nuclear
facility. Israel responded by convicting him of treason. He was
released in 2004 after spending 18 years in prison but has
continued to talk about the program on occasion.
- The government has barred Mr. Vanunu from leaving Israel.
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- 'Nuclear-free' zone
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- References to a "nuclear-free Middle East," meanwhile, have
cropped up increasingly in international resolutions and
conferences. For example, the 1991 U.N. Security Council
Resolution 687, which sanctioned Saddam Hussein's Iraq, noted "the
objective of achieving balanced and comprehensive control of
armaments in the region." More recently, a March
- 2006 IAEA resolution, in referring Iran to the Security
Council, noted "that a solution to the Iranian issue would
contribute to global nonproliferation efforts and to realizing the
objective of a Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction."
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- U.S. allies Egypt and Saudi Arabia also have pressed the U.S.
to link Israel's weapons to Iran's as part of a plan to implement
a nuclear-free Middle East.
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- A proposal to introduce a Security Council resolution
declaring the Middle East a nuclear-free zone and calling for
sanctions against those countries that did not comply was broached
in a 2006 strategic dialogue between Saudi Arabia and the United
States, said Turki al-Faisal, who was Saudi ambassador to the U.S.
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- "When I talked to American officials about that when I was
ambassador here, and before that to British officials in the U.K.,
the immediate response was, 'Israel is not going to accept,' "
Prince Turki told editors and reporters of The Washington Times
last month. "And my immediate response was, 'So what?' If Israel
doesnt accept, it doesnt mean its a bad idea."
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- A balancing act
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- Mr. Netanyahu, whose meeting with Mr. Obama on May 18 will be
the first since both took office, raised the issue of the nuclear
understanding during a previous tenure as prime minister.
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- Israeli journalists and officials said Mr. Netanyahu asked for
a reaffirmation and clarification of the Nixon-Meir understanding
in 1998 at Wye River, where the U.S. mediated an agreement between
Israel and the Palestinians. Mr. Netanyahu wanted a personal
commitment from President Clinton because of concerns about a
treaty that Mr. Clinton supported to bar production of fissile
materials that can be used to make weapons.
- Israel was worried that the treaty would apply to de facto
nuclear states, including Israel, and might oblige it to allow
inspections of Dimona.
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- In 2000, Israeli journalist Aluf Benn disclosed that Mr.
Clinton at Wye River promised Mr. Netanyahu that "Israels nuclear
capability will be preserved." Mr. Benn described as testy an
exchange of letters between the two leaders over the Fissile
Material Cut-Off Treaty. He said Mr.
- Netanyahu wrote Mr. Clinton: "We will never sign the treaty,
and do not delude yourselves - no pressure will help. We will not
sign the treaty because we will not commit suicide."
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- The Bush administration largely dropped the treaty in its
first term and reopened negotiations in its second term with a
proposal that did not include verification.
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- The Obama agenda
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- Mr. Obama has made nuclear disarmament a bigger priority in
part to undercut Iran's and North Korea's rationale for
proliferation. His administration has begun negotiations with
Russia on a new treaty to reduce U.S. and Russian arsenals. He
also has expressed support for the fissile material treaty.
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- "To cut off the building blocks needed for a bomb, the United
States will seek a new treaty that verifiably ends the production
of fissile materials intended for use in state nuclear weapons,"
he said last month in Prague.
- "If we are serious about stopping the spread of these weapons,
then we should put an end to the dedicated production of
weapons-grade materials that create them."
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- David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and
International Security, a Washington think tank, said such a
treaty would be the first step toward limiting the Israeli nuclear
program.
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- "The question is how much of a priority is this for the Obama
administration?" he said.
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- John R. Bolton, a former U.N. ambassador and undersecretary of
state, said Israel was right to be concerned.
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- "If I were the Israeli government, I would be very worried
about the Obama administration's attitude on their nuclear
deterrent," he said. "You can barely raise the subject of nuclear
weapons in the Middle East without someone saying: 'What about
Israel?' If Israel's opponents put it on the table, it is entirely
possible Obama will pick it up."
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- Asked about the issue, Jonathan Peled, spokesman for the
Israeli Embassy in Washington, said, "We don't discuss the
strategic relationship between the United States and Israel." The
White House had no immediate comment.
-
- However, Ms. Gottemoeller endorsed the concept of a
nuclear-free Middle East in a 2005 paper that she co-authored,
"Universal Compliance: A Strategy for Nuclear Security."
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- "Instead of defensively trying to ignore Israels nuclear
status, the United States and Israel should proactively call for
regional dialogue to specify the conditions necessary to achieve a
zone free of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons," she
wrote.
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- The paper recommends that Israel take steps to disarm in
exchange for its neighbors getting rid of chemical and biological
weapons programs as well as Iran forgoing uranium enrichment.
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- • Barbara Slavin and Erin Spiegel contributed to this report
from Washington.
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