TEL AVIV (JTA) — Israel’s prime minister will attend President Obama’s Nuclear Security Summit next week, but no one-on-one meeting is planned for the two leaders.
Benjamin Netanyahu and Obama met a little more than two weeks ago at the White House for discussions that failed to resolve a diplomatic impasse over Israel’s announcement of plan for 1,600 new housing units in a Jewish neighborhood of eastern Jerusalem. Netanyahu had come to Washington to address the annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
The nuclear summit will deal with issues of nonproliferation and will include the participation of representatives from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Earlier this week, Obama said the United States would adopt a new nuclear policy that would commit the country to avoid using nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states in compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, even if such states attacked America with nonconventional arms such as biological or chemical weapons.
Iran, which will be excepted from the new policy because it is in violation of the treaty, is expected to be a major topic of discussion at the conference.
Israeli officials indicated they were not concerned that no Obama-Netanyahu meeting was planned; they noted that Israel will be one of some 40 countries represented at the conference.
