|
President Mubarak’s initiative and the needed procedures for supporting and following up its implementation:
The Egyptian diplomacy exerts relentless efforts within the framework of the United Nations to support the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT). In this context, Egypt spares no effort to call on Israel to join to the treaty and to submit all its nuclear facilities to the IAEA Safeguards System. Since 1980, Egypt proposed a resolution concerning “The Israeli Nuclear Armament”, to the General Assembly, the same resolution was also proposed for the first time by Iraq in 1979. The resolution’s title was modified to be “The Danger of Nuclear Proliferation in the Middle East”, and gains the majority of votes annually.
In coordination with Egypt, Iran proposed a resolution to the General Assembly in 1974 for “Establishing a weapons-of-mass-destruction-free-zone in the Middle East”. Since then, Egypt proposes the draft resolution annually to the First Committee of the General Assembly, and the resolution gains a consensus. This resolution calls for establishing a weapons-of-mass-destruction-free-zone in the Middle East, submitting all the nuclear facilities in the region under the comprehensive IAEA Safeguards System, and declaring the abandonment of developing or industrializing nuclear weapons. Within the framework of the IAEA and during the annual general meeting, Egypt succeeds in proposing and issuing the annual resolution on “implementing the IAEA Safeguards in the Middle East”, which is adopted after reaching a consensus.
In 1981 and after the Egyptian-Israeli peace agreement, Egypt decided to ratify the NPT, as a confidence building procedure hoping that Israel would do the same; however, the latter boycotted the treaty. In 1990, President Mubarak proposed an initiative for freeing the Middle East from weapons of mass destruction, which was welcomed by the majority of the international parties.
The NPT Review Conferences, which are held every five years, such as the Seventh NPT Review Conference which was held in May 2005, in New York, provide an appropriate opportunity for asserting the basic references that govern the Egyptian strategy in the field on nuclear disarmament. The principle of nuclear disarmament is a necessity for globalizing the NPT, and for widening NPT membership to include all countries, including Israel as an implementation of the Middle East resolution which was issued by the NPT Review and Extension Conference in 1995, and constituted a fundamental condition for approving the NPT unlimited extension. This principle was also a condition for the comprehensive nuclear disarmament, which was stated in the previous Review Conferences resolutions, without restricting the right to the peaceful use of nuclear energy.
In view of the reiterated calls upon the Egyptian Government to join the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), and the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), Egypt maintains its, mere political, rejecting stance as long as Israel refuses to join the NPT. The Egyptian stance links between Israel’s NPT membership, and accepting any further obligations in relation to nuclear armament, noting that Egypt is free from nuclear weapons. Egypt is still preserving its pioneering stance in regards to globalizing the NPT and achieving regional security and stability on a balanced base of rights and obligations.
|