Turkey confirms push to disarm Israel

[Cheetah786]

(Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has withdrawn from a nuclear security summit in Washington next week, fearing Muslim delegates will demand Israel give up its assumed atomic arsenal.

Barack Obama

Netanyahu, who plans to send a deputy and two senior advisers to the April 12-13 conference instead, canceled "after learning that some countries including Egypt and Turkey plan to say Israel must sign the NPT," an Israeli official said.

By staying outside the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Israel has not had to forswear nuclear arms nor admit international inspectors to its Dimona reactor, which experts believe has produced plutonium for between 80 and 200 warheads.

Netanyahu's attendance at the 47-country summit would have been unprecedented. Israeli premiers long shunned such forums, hoping to dampen foreign scrutiny on their nuclear secrets.

Aides said Netanyahu originally agreed to go after being reassured by the United States that the summit communique would focus on efforts to secure fissile materials and shun language challenging Israel's nuclear "ambiguity" policy.

Such coordination between the allies has been clouded, however, by rifts over stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

U.S. President Barack Obama, who held tense talks at the White House with Netanyahu last month, scheduled no meetings with him on the summit's sidelines.

A senior Egyptian diplomat said he had no knowledge of a plan to shift attention onto Israel at the summit and accused Netanyahu of trying to evade questions on the Palestinian issue.

"We believe that Netanyahu withdrew from the summit because he did not want to face President Obama and is using Egypt and Turkey as an excuse," the diplomat said.

But the Foreign Ministry in Ankara confirmed that Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, who has sharply escalated criticism of Israel since last year's Gaza war, would demand at the summit that it disarm as part of a nuclear-free Middle East.

NPT RSVP

"Israel is the principal threat to peace in the region today," the French newspaper Le Monde quoted Erdogan as saying in Paris this week.

"Israel has nuclear weapons but doesn't belong to the NPT. Does that mean that those who don't sign the NPT are in a privileged position?"

Yet Egyptian and Turkish diplomats played down the prospect of the NPT coming up at the summit, saying the appropriate place would be next month's U.N. review conference on the treaty.

The White House welcomed Netanyahu's stand-in, Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor, to the summit. Meridor will be accompanied by Israeli National Security Adviser Uzi Arad and Shaul Horev, head of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission, aides said.

"We obviously would like to have the prime minister but the deputy prime minister will be leading the delegation and it will be a robust Israeli delegation," U.S. National Security Adviser Jim Jones told reporters.

U.S.-Israeli contacts are "ongoing and fine and continuous," he said.

Netanyahu had planned to drum up support at the summit for sanctions against foe Iran, which the West suspects of seeking nuclear weapons despite denials from Tehran. Neither Iran nor North Korea will be attending.

"This conference is about nuclear terrorism," Netanyahu said on Wednesday. "And I'm not concerned that anyone will think that Israel is a terrorist regime. Everybody knows a terrorist and rogue regime when they see one, and believe me they see quite a few -- around Israel."

Israel says its nuclear secrecy helps ward off enemies while avoiding the kind of provocations that can trigger arms races.

The official reticence, and the tacit U.S. acceptance of Israel's nuclear monopoly, aggrieves Arab and Muslim powers.

India and Pakistan -- both scheduled to attend the nuclear security summit -- are outside the NPT, like Israel. Unlike them, Israel has not openly tested or deployed atomic weapons.

Netanyahu ducks U.S. nuclear summit, fearing censure | Reuters

 

[Kompromat]

gurjot your post has been reported , be carefull next time when you post non constructive emo comments.

 

[Kompromat]

Israel Signs NPT & Iran caps its Program two of these can bring some peaceful days in ME.

 

[Jigs]

This won't provide much pressure to Israel but it is a start.

 

[automoto]

Why are so many Israelis arrested over illegal arms deals worldwide?


The U.S. authorities' recent arrest of an Israeli for seeking to sell arms to Somalia raises disturbing questions and answers.



At least seven Israeli arms dealers are currently in jail in four countries - the United States, Russia, France and Britain - on charges of illegal arms dealing. Some of them are also suspected of crimes such as forgery, bribery, money laundering and violating UN Security Council embargoes. Such arrests are briefly covered in Israel and then forgotten. But they have a cumulative effect that is very damaging to Israel's image, or what remains of it.

Even though it is doubtful whether those in jail know one another, they have quite a lot in common. All are men in their fifties or sixties. All are well to do (or were in the past ), having made most of their money in international arms dealing or in exporting security services and equipment from Israel. They served in the Israel Defense Forces and reached mid-level ranks (from captain to lieutenant colonel ), and when they were arrested, they denied the charges. Friends who came to their assistance described them, naturally, as "the salt of the earth."

All seven are familiar faces in the corridors of the defense establishment, and at one time received arms dealing permits from the Defense Ministry. All sought to "expedite procedures" in violation of local or international laws, and did so out of pure greed. Due to this covetousness, they also fell into traps and can expect to face many years in jail.

Shimon Naor-Hershkowitz is detained in France and will apparently be extradited to Romania, where he will serve an 11-year jail sentence. He was convicted of forging documents (end-user certificates ) that he used to purchase Romanian arms together with a Romanian partner (who later informed on him to the authorities ). The arms were ostensibly destined for Togo, but in reality were sent to rebels in Angola.

Yair Klein has been held for over a year in a Russian jail, after being arrested there at the behest of Colombia, which wants him on charges of training drug barons' bodyguards. Klein, almost 70, may be the Israeli who comes closest to being a "mercenary" of the ugliest sort. He has previously done jail time in Sierra Leone.

In a British jail sits Gidon Sarig, 58, who was sentenced several months ago to seven years in prison for selling arms and other combat gear to parties in Venezuela, Peru, Senegal, Nigeria, Gabon and, primarily, Sri Lanka.

And in January, Ofer Pazaf, 50, the president of a Kfar Sava company that works as an intermediary and represents security consultants and defense industries, was arrested in Las Vegas. Arrested with him were two other Israelis who have lived in the U.S. for several years: Yohanan Cohen, 47, the CEO of a San Francisco company that manufactures security gear, and Haim Gary, 50, the president of a Miami company that functions as a middleman for defense companies.

All three, along with 20 Americans and people of other nationalities, were arrested in a sting operation by the Federal Bureau of Investigations. One of the agents posed as a representative of the defense minister of an African country and pretended to be looking to purchase arms in return for a bribe - known in the professional lingo as a "commission."

The latest Israeli to find himself behind bars is Hanoch Miller, 53, who was arrested a few days ago in the United States. Together with his partner, retired U.S. Air Force colonel Joseph O'Toole, he is charged with attempts to obtain and sell thousands of AK-47 (Kalashnikov ) rifles to the "government" of Somaliland, a separatist region of northern Somalia. The arms were to have been purchased in the United States and to have been sent on cargo planes to Panama and Bosnia, and from there to Somaliland. But the plan fell through because the third partner, who was supposed to purchase the rifles for Miller and O'Toole, was actually an informer for the customs authorities.

European sources - security and insurance personnel working in Somalia, who are well acquainted with the area - told Haaretz that this story does not make sense, and that the official version put out by the U.S. authorities may conceal a different story. For instance, the indictment stated that the arms were to have been sent to a city called Bandera in northern Somalia. But a look at a map of Somalia reveals that this name is fictitious: No such place exists in Somalia.

Moreover, the shipping documents stated that the cargo was for "the Ministry of Defense of the Somali Republic." But the government of the separatist area known as Somaliland does not refer to itself as the "Somali Republic." Ever since the military coup in 1969 that sent the country down the sewer, its official name has been the Democratic Republic of Somalia.