The State Department again urged Israel today to sign the nuclear nonproliferation treaty. “We believe that regional stability in the Middle East will be enhanced if all states in the region accepted comprehensive: safeguards and adhered to the nonproliferation treaty,” State Department deputy spokesman Charles Redman said at the daily press briefing in response to a reporter’s question on Israel’s failure, so far, to sign the treaty.
“We are concerned by the existence of unsafeguarded nuclear facilities in Israel and have made this concern known to the Israeli government,” Redman added. “We have repeatedly urged Israel to accept comprehensive safeguards.”
However, Redman noted that “Israel has stated publicly that it will not be the first nation to introduce nuclear weapons in the region.”
Although Israel has never admitted to have nuclear weapons, Leonard Spector, a senior associate at the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, in his recently published “The New Nuclear Nations,” Carnegie’s second annual report on the spread of nuclear weapons, said that Israel is believed to have 20 to 25 aircraft-deliverable nuclear weapons.
Redman stressed that the U.S. has strong controls on the export of “commodities that have nuclear application” and is working “strenuously” with other supplier countries to control such exports.
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