UN in the dark about Israel's nuclear arsenal
February 26 2004 at 02:30AM
Reuters
Vienna - The extent of Israel's atomic weapons programme is a mystery to the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the agency's chief said in an interview broadcast on Wednesday.
"Unfortunately I can't give a precise opinion about it because we don't do any inspections in Israel," Mohamed ElBaradei told Al Arabiya television when asked about the size of Israel's nuclear weapons programme.
"I know that it's a developed programme, and Israel does not deny that it has nuclear capability, but the size of the programme, the extent of its development, really I can't know."
Non-proliferation analysts estimate Israel has anywhere from 100 to 200 atomic weapons, but the country has not signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and does not confirm or deny having nuclear weapons.
However, a new book by Washington Times Pentagon correspondent Rowan Scarborough - Rumsfeld's War: The Untold Story of America's Anti-Terrorist Commander - suggests that Israel's nuclear arsenal may be more modestly sized.
An excerpt published in the Washington Times newspaper cites a classified Pentagon report on future threats into the year 2020. Among other things, the report predicts Israel would maintain a nuclear arsenal of about 80 warheads.
But ElBaradei was not so concerned about exact figures.
"It's enough for me to know that it has nuclear capability, there is a conviction that it has a nuclear weapon," ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said in the Arabic-language interview recorded in Libya on Tuesday.
The UN watchdog has long encouraged Israel to sign the NPT and help create a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East. Israel has refused to consider nuclear disarmament, citing a precarious security situation.
"Israel still thinks that in the absence of complete recognition by all countries in the region it can't talk about giving up the nuclear deterrent or limiting conventional and non-conventional weapons," ElBaradei said in the interview near the end of a two-day visit to the Libyan capital Tripoli.
Apart from North Korea, which Washington believes may already have at least one nuclear warhead, most of the suspicions of covert nuclear weapons programmes have focused on the Middle East and countries considered to be Israel's enemies.
In December, Libya agreed to give up its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programmes and invited the IAEA and other international experts to help it disarm.
Both the United States and Israel accuse Iran of having a secret atom bomb programme, though Tehran denies this. On Tuesday the IAEA said in a report that it had found new evidence Iran has been hiding sensitive atomic technology and research that could be linked to a weapons programme.
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