Israel says ME nuke non proliferation plan flawed

Washington Post:

Israel on Saturday sharply criticized an action plan on nuclear weapons agreed to by the United States and 188 other countries, rebuffing its most novel proposal -- a conference in 2012 to discuss ridding the Middle East of weapons of mass destruction.

The action plan stressed the "importance" of Israel joining the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty but did not mention Iran's expanding atomic program, the Israeli government noted.

The agreement, reached a day earlier, had put U.S. officials in an awkward position: Rejecting it would have spelled failure for a month-long conference on the NPT, which has curbed the spread of nuclear weapons for 40 years. But accepting it created a new source of tension between the allies, just days before a visit to Washington by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

In a statement Saturday, the Israeli government called the plan "deeply flawed," adding that "it ignores the realities of the Middle East and the real threats facing the region and the entire world."

The plan "singles out Israel, the Middle East's only true democracy and the only country threatened with annihilation," the statement said. "Yet the terrorist regime in Iran, which is racing to develop nuclear weapons and which openly threatens to wipe Israel off the map, is not even mentioned."

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That does sound deeply flawed. What made any of these parties think this would do anything positive to settle the real problems of the Middle East? Israel's nukes are a problem only to those who wish to destroy Israel. The US should never have let this idea get this far. This is clearly not "smart diplomacy."