Blix panel prods Israel, Iran on nuclear agenda

By Irwin Arieff

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – Iran and Israel should both end
nuclear enrichment as part of a renewed drive to rid the Middle
East of weapons of mass destruction, a panel led by former U.N.
arms inspector Hans Blix said on Thursday.

The Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission also recommended
adopting a treaty banning nuclear testing by all nuclear powers
that have not already done so, including the United States,
China, India and Pakistan.

“The reality is that if the U.S. were to ratify, then China
would. If China did, India would. If India did, Pakistan would.
If Pakistan did, then Iran would. It would set in motion a good
domino effect,” Blix told a news conference.

The recommendations were among 60 offered by the panel, set
up by Sweden’s government three years ago to pump new life into
global disarmament efforts and help free the world of nuclear,
biological and chemical weapons.

Blix was in New York to give the report to U.N.
Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who in a statement called on the
international community to consider its findings.

The report could embarrass Israel, which has never admitted
having nuclear arms and, unlike Iran, is not a member of the
nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Blix led the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy
Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency, for 16 years before
heading the U.N. search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq
just ahead of the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

Blix said the panel felt efforts to convince Iran to
suspend its enrichment of uranium and other sensitive nuclear
programs were too narrow.

If the focus were placed on all Middle Eastern states,
“That would mean that Iran would refrain from this. It would
also mean that Israel would commit itself not to make more
plutonium. They are assumed to have about 200 nuclear weapons,”
Blix told reporters.

Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria and other regional states would
also be asked to refrain from enrichment, he added, which
“would walk in the direction of a zone free of weapons of mass
destruction rather than away from it.”

The report was issued as major-power foreign ministers
conferred in Vienna on a plan to increase pressure on Tehran to
curb its nuclear ambitions, as called for by the IAEA and the
U.N. Security Council.

Iran, the world’s fourth-largest oil exporter, says it
wants only to produce electricity but Western powers accuse it
of using a civilian nuclear program as a cover for the
production of atomic weapons.

Blix said the West should recognize Tehran might feel
threatened by the presence of U.S. troops in nearby Iraq and
Afghanistan. For that reason the commission said countries
acknowledging nuclear arsenals should offer legally binding
assurances to those countries without atomic arms that they
will not come under nuclear attack. The West has so far refused
to do this in the case of Iran.