News, December 2003, www.aljazeerah.info
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Syria asks UN to help rid Mideast of nuclear arms
Jordan Times, Tuesday, December 30, 2003
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) Syria pushed for a ban on nuclear, biological and chemical weapons in the Middle East on Monday, using its final days on the UN Security Council to shine a spotlight on Israel's suspected nuclear arms. Syrian Ambassador Fayssal Mekdad, whose two-year term on the 15-nation council expires at midnight on Wednesday, asked the UN body to take up a resolution drafted by Damascus in April that is intended to rid the volatile Middle East region of all unconventional arms.
But in a closed-door meeting, diplomats said, a number of the council's member nations including the United States, Britain and Pakistan expressed concerns with the Syrian text and Mekdad said he would not push for a quick vote.
The Syrian draft was "wrong in substance, wrong in timing," Deputy US Ambassador James Cunningham said.
"We don't expect the resolution to make much progress," British Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry told reporters.
The draft calls for "freeing the Middle East region of all weapons of mass destruction" and asks Secretary General Kofi Annan to verify whether the measure, once passed, is implemented.
Syria asked for Monday's meeting after the council last week issued a statement welcoming Libya's announcement that it was voluntarily abandoning its programmes for developing weapons of mass destruction.
But Arab envoys said the draft was clearly aimed at embarrassing Israel, widely believed to be the only country in the Middle East to have nuclear weapons though it has never officially acknowledged possessing them.
The draft resolution "is applicable to everybody, but in fact Israel is the real address in this regard, whether we like it or not, because Israel has all these kinds of weapons" and has not ratified most nonproliferation treaties, Mekdad said.
Israeli officials declined to comment on Monday's discussion.
But Uzi Rubin, a defence ministry adviser and founding engineer and developer of Israel's Arrow anti-missile system, anticipated no impact on Israeli policy as a result of the fresh pleas for disarmament.
Despite Libya's announcement, "we are still faced with massively asymmetrical hostility 5 million Israeli Jews against some 500 million Muslim Arabs and for that we must always be prepared," Rubin said.
"Washington will not be quick to pressure Israel in this matter. The Americans want Middle East stability, and they know that a secure Israel is less likely to precipitate instability by taking offensive action. We do not proliferate or saber rattle when it comes to our presumed nonconventional capability, so we have long enjoyed tacit US backing," Rubin said.
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| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank, like a Python (Alquds, 1/25/03. |
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