United Nations, May 05: Egypt and the United States sought Tuesday to work out a compromise at the United Nations on starting talks on a Middle East nuclear weapons-free zone, diplomats said.
Egyptian Ambassador Hisham Badr on Tuesday called on a UN conference on the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to support “concrete and practical steps” for “the establishment of a Middle Eastern zone free of nuclear weapons, as well as other weapons of mass destruction.”
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had told the conference on Monday that the United States was “prepared to support practical measures” towards “the objective of a Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction.”
Diplomats said the two sides were working behind the scenes to reconcile a hardline Egyptian position that a conference should be held to begin negotiating on such a zone with the US and Israeli stance that creating a zone depends on first finding peace in the Middle East.
“We’re not there yet but we are talking,” an Arab diplomat told AFP.
The deadlock over this issue threatens to block progress at the NPT meeting, which seeks progress on disarmament and non-proliferation.
US State Department spokesman Phillip Crowley told AFP that the “practical measures” mentioned by Clinton were “helping create conditions that allow us to advance this concept (of a nuclear weapons-free zone). Peace negotiations would be one of them.”
But Arab diplomats insist that creating such a zone should not be held hostage to the lack of peace in the Middle East.
“A conference should look at whatever steps are necessary to move forward,” said one diplomat.
“But we expect it would be one which would launch negotiations on a zone and not just be a talk shop,” he said.
Egypt is insisting that Israel join the NPT and that there be an international conference on creating a nuclear weapons free zone in the Middle East.
Israel is believed to have some 200 atom bombs but does not confirm this. It says there must be peace in the Middle East before setting up a weapons-free zone.
The NPT bargain is that nuclear weapons states pledge to move towards disarmament while other states forswear the bomb in return for access to peaceful nuclear energy.
NPT review conferences have been held every five years since the treaty was signed in 1970.
The 1995 review conference extended the NPT indefinitely, with nations hailing the treaty as one of the most successful international agreements ever because of its success in limiting the spread of nuclear weapons.
The 2000 conference outlined steps to disarmament by nuclear-weapons states.
But the NPT process stalled in 2005, when bickering over a Middle East weapons-free zone and over the Iranian nuclear crisis destroyed any chance of new agreements or fixes to the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
US President Barack Obama has made moving forward on non-proliferation a top priority, and is seeking an accommodation with Egypt in order to avoid a stalemate at this year’s NPT conference.
Diplomats said the two sides, with Egypt speaking for non-aligned states, were considering the idea of appointing a special envoy to look into setting up a conference.
An Arab diplomat said, however, that “a conference would have to be endorsed before an envoy would be appointed.”
He said it would not be acceptable to paper over the dispute by having an envoy appointed, with no reasonable hope of having a conference.
“We’re not three-year-olds. We know what’s going on,” the diplomat said.
–Agencies