U.S. urges Israel to sign anti-nuclear arms treaty

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"India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel should join the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the global pact meant to limit the spread of atomic weapons, a senior U.S. official said on Tuesday.

Speaking on the second day of a two-week meeting of the 189 signatories of the pact, Assistant Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller also defended a U.S.-India civilian nuclear deal, which developing nations have complained rewards New Delhi for staying outside the NPT.

"Universal adherence to the NPT itself, including by India, Israel, Pakistan and North Korea ... remains a fundamental objective of the United States," Gottemoeller told the meeting, which hopes to agree on an agenda and plan to overhaul the treaty at a review conference next year.

Speaking to reporters later, she declined to say whether Washington would take any new steps to press Israel to join the treaty and give up any nuclear weapons it has. Israel neither confirms nor denies whether it has what arms control experts assume to be a sizable atomic arsenal.

"The administration of President Barack Obama was encouraging all holdouts to join the treaty," she said."

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"It is unclear whether the U.S. assistant secretary of state's call to Israel to sign on to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty indicates a change in Washington's policy toward Israel's nuclear program, or even if the move was anticipated by the White House.

It is clear, however, that where there's smoke, there's fire. The U.S. has been protecting Israel for years, creating a diplomatic umbrella and pushing away any attempt, in any international debate, to discuss the nuclear weapons the entire world believes Israel possesses.

America's protection of Israel began as early as 1969, when then-president Richard Nixon entered the White House along with National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger.

Nixon halted visits by American inspectors to the Dimona nuclear reactor, a process which began as a result of John F. Kennedy's pressure on Israel and continued during Lyndon Bates Johnson's administration.

These visits were less than effective, however since Israel in fact deceived the inspectors.

As former Israeli foreign minister, Abba Eban, once testified, Israel erected a double array of buildings in Dimona in order to throw off inspection. But it is doubtful whether inspectors were really deceived, or if they just wanted to be deceived.

American diplomacy was aided by the indirect support it received from Israel. This help came in the form of Israel's "ambiguous" nuclear policy. This policy relied on a linguistic stroke of brilliance uttered by Shimon Peres in the early 1960s, during his tenure as deputy defense minister.

Israel has never affirmed nor denied that it possesses nuclear weapons. It has consistently asserted that it would not be "the first to introduce nuclear weapons to the Middle East."

Even though the world does not always buy Israel's word, and is rather convinced that it does indeed have nuclear weapons, it this policy of ambiguity that makes it possible to repel any attempt at portraying Israel as a nuclear-capable country."

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