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Deputy PM at nukes summit: Israel’s nuclear program is vigorous, but not secret

14 April 2010 02:34 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Israel has been working "vigorously, but not secretly" on its nuclear program, Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor told reporters at a 47-nation nuclear summit in Washington on Tuesday, APA reports quoting Haaretz.com web-page.

"Over the last few years, we have made no small effort to secure our nuclear facilities," said Meridor, who took Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s place as Israel’s representative to the summit. "We have very vigorous activity, but nothing secret."

Israel’s nuclear activity had not mentioned in any address giving over the course of the two-day summit, said Meridor, who noted that the conference was being held in "a good atmosphere."
"We are in an atmosphere of cooperation, both in the plenum and on the sidelines," said Meridor. "[Israel] is not the central topic here; we have not been mentioned by any of the speakers, even by those who you might think would talk about us."

"In conversations with world leaders, including from Arab states, I have not encountered an ambush so far," said Meridor.

U.S. President Barack Obama warned earlier Tuesday that the threat of terrorists using an atomic weapon in a catastrophic attack has risen, and called on all countries to formualte a plan to keep nuclear material safe.

Obama opened a full day of talks at an unprecendented summit in Washington to address that challenge. Leaders and top officials from more than 47 nations are attending the summit, the largest hosted by an American president since 1945.

"Terrorist networks such as al-Qaida have tried to acquire the material for a nuclear weapon. And if they ever succeeded, they would surely use it," Obama said.

"Were they to do so, it would be a catastrophe for the world, causing extraordinary loss of life and striking a major blow to global peace and stability," he added.

Obama called on countries to adopt a "concrete" plan to secure nuclear materials within four years as part of his broader agenda for a nuclear-free world outlined in a Prague speech a year ago.

"Two decades after the end of the Cold War, we face a cruel irony of history," Obama said. "The risk of a nuclear confrontation between nations has gone down, but the risk of nuclear attack has gone up."

Obama announced plans to hold a follow-up summit hosted by South Korea in 2012.

The goals of the ongoing talks include strengthening international safeguards to account for and adequately secure stockpiles of nuclear material and reduce the use of highly enriched uranium used in civilian reactors. The substance is a key ingredient for a weapon.

"We have the opportunity as individual nations to take specific and concrete actions to secure the nuclear materials in our countries and to prevent illicit trafficking and smuggling," he said.

Ukraine and Canada announced during the summit plans to give up highly enriched uranium as part of a broader, long standing effort led by the United States and Russia to take back the dangerous fuel and convert civilian reactors into using the much safer low enriched uranium.

Obama wants to strengthen efforts to halt the spread of nucleartechnology on the black market and more stringent prosecution of individuals responsible for the illicit trade.

The summit comes after a U.S.-Russian pact to reduce their existing nuclear arsenals by one-third, a treaty Obama signed Thursday with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. It also comes after Obama announced a shift in nuclear policy that pledged to not use nuclear weapons against countries which do not have them. That policy, however, excluded Iran and North Korea because they are not seen as cooperating on non-proliferation.

While the focus of the summit is on securing nuclear stockpiles, Iran’s continued defiance of international demands to halt uranium enrichment and come clean about its nuclear activities has been a sub-text at the gathering. Iran denies Western allegations that its nuclear program is designed to achieve a weapons capability.

The topic was high on the agenda when Obama met with Chinese President Hu Jintao on Monday as part of an effort to persuade a reluctant Beijing to support tougher UN Security Council sanctions. A senior White House official told reporters after the meeting that China signalled a willingness to cooperate in drafting sanctions.

Obama also met with the leaders of India, Pakistan, South Africa, Jordan, Malaysia and a number of other countries before convening the formal session.

Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov are expected to sign a deal Tuesday to implement an agreement for the two countries to each dispose 34,000 metric tonnes of weapons-grade plutonium from existing stockpiles.

The Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement has been in the works for more than a decade and was agreed to in principle in 2000, but Moscow and Washington had differed over protocols to implement the pact.