Global Security Newswire

Arab nations urged the European Union in June to join them in demanding that Israel submit to international scrutiny of its nuclear activities, the Associated Press reported yesterday (see GSN, Aug. 12).

Israel is widely considered the Middle East's only nuclear-armed state, but it has never publicly acknowledged possession of nuclear weapons. At the International Atomic Energy Agency's General Conference each year, Israel's neighbors routinely propose resolutions calling on Jerusalem to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty as a non-nuclear weapon state and open its nuclear sites to U.N. inspectors.

In a June 29 letter to Sweden, the current holder of the rotating EU presidency, the 22-nation League of Arab States links its demand for Israeli nuclear transparency to U.S. President Barack Obama's recent calls for the world to move toward nuclear disarmament.

The letter, penned by League of Arab States leader Amre Moussa, urged Sweden to support a resolution proposed this year entitled "Israel's Nuclear Capabilities." The letter included a draft version of the resolution.

"We are hopeful that your country would support the Arab draft resolution," Moussa wrote in the message to Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt. "Unfortunately," Sweden and other EU countries voted against a similar proposal in 2008, he noted.

Moussa's letter was also submitted to the top diplomats from the 26 other EU member nations, European sources told AP yesterday.

Sweden was working on a response to the letter that would represent the EU position, but Stockholm has not yet settled on its final position, Swedish Foreign Ministry spokesman Anders Jorle said.

The positions that the 27 EU nations take on the resolution take could be key to the measure's chances of success; a similar proposal failed by only a slim margin last year, suggesting that calls for Israeli nuclear transparency were gaining momentum in developing nations and elsewhere (George Jahn, Associated Press/Google News, Aug. 13).