Yehuda Blum, Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, presented Secretary General Kurt Waldheim today with a letter and the text of a draft resolution on the establishment of a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the Mideast.
The draft resolution, the first submitted by Israel to the UN on the issue of nuclear armament, calls upon “All states of the Middle East to convene at the earliest possible date a conference with a view to negotiating a multilateral treaty establishing a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the Mideast.”
Today’s draft resolution was the third draft resolution ever submitted by Israel since it became a member of the UN on May 11, 1949.
In recent years, Israeli spokesmen, including its foreign ministers, called for a conference of Mideast nations to reach a resolution of the nuclear arms issue. Foreign Minister Yitzhak-Shamir, in his speech before the General Assembly on Sept. 29, declared that “Israel believes that an international conference of all the states in the region and adjacent to our region should be held leading to the conclusion of a formal, contractual, multilateral Convention between all states of the region.”
Today’s draft resolution “urges all states in the region to state by May 1, 1981 their willingness to participate in the conference,” and “requests the Secretary General to provide the necessary facilities for the convening of such a conference.”
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