UN looks to Israel for nuclear disarmament

VIENNA -- Amid growing fears of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, the UN atomic agency chief, Mohamed ElBaradei, travels to Israel this week to promote a nuclear weapons-free zone in the region.

The three-day visit, which begins Tuesday, follows a series of reports about nuclear activity involving Iran and Libya. It also follows calls for a tightening of the system of global controls preventing the spread of atomic arms.

With political tension on the rise in the Middle East, and with a burgeoning global black market that allows nations to acquire nuclear technology, ElBaradei has argued repeatedly that to avoid catastrophe, the nuclear option must be removed from the region.

And officials at the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency say one key to such a development is Israel, which has not signed the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and which is the only state in the Middle East known to have a nuclear arsenal.

''As long as you continue to have countries dangling a cigarette from their mouth, you cannot tell everybody not to smoke with a high degree of credibility," Reuters quoted ElBaradei as telling reporters last Sunday in Moscow.

Security analysts estimate that Israel has 100 to 200 atomic weapons, although under a policy of so-called strategic ambiguity, the country neither admits nor denies that it has nuclear arms.

Proponents of Israel's weapons program argue that it needs a nuclear deterrent to ensure its security in a hostile region. Others argue that it creates a double standard in the region and motivates other countries in the Middle East to pursue atomic arms as well.

ElBaradei has said he wants all countries in the region, including Israel, to renounce atomic weapons and allow a vigorous regime of strict IAEA inspections.

Officials in Vienna argue that in the long run this would enhance Israel's security because it would forestall other states in the region from acquiring nuclear weapons and prevent a destabilizing arms race in the Middle East.

''As long as Israel has them, then if not Libya or Iran, someone else will eventually get them," a senior Western diplomat in Vienna knowledgeable about nonproliferation issues said on condition of anonymity.

Iran announced last month that it is was resuming some activities associated with uranium enrichment, reversing a voluntary moratorium.

Libya announced in December that it was abandoning efforts to develop nuclear weapons and opened its facilities to inspectors.

Israel insists a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East can only happen after a comprehensive regional peace agreement. ElBaradei says he wants peace and nuclear-disarmament talks to take place simultaneously.

In a statement last week, Israel's Committee on Atomic Energy said it ''will listen closely" to ElBaradei's views.

Efforts to promote a nuclear-free Middle East are part of an effort by ElBaradei to bolster the Nonproliferation Treaty. The IAEA chief has proposed several measures, including tightening export controls and placing sensitive parts of the nuclear fuel cycle under international authority.

But ElBaradei and others have said repeatedly that any successful change in the treaty must engage Israel, Pakistan, and India -- the world's three nuclear powers who have not signed.

''Without their inclusion in and commitment to this broad nonproliferation and security reform, our efforts will fail," ElBaradei said in a speech before the Carnegie Center for International Peace on June 21 in Washington. The problem with bringing the three nations into the nonproliferation fold lies in the treaty itself, which allows only five countries -- the United States, Russia, China, Great Britain, and France -- to possess nuclear weapons.

To join the treaty, Israel, Pakistan, and India would be required to give up their weapons programs and arsenals -- something none of them is currently willing to do.

But in the runup to ElBaradei's trip to Israel, some diplomats and nonproliferation officials have floated ideas about ways to break the impasse. One involves drafting a side agreement in which Israel, Pakistan, and India would be allowed to keep their weapons temporarily and agree to disarm.

A recent article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists proposes the broad outlines of such a protocol.

Written by Avner Cohen, author of the 1998 book ''Israel and the Bomb," and Thomas Graham Jr., an arms control official in the Clinton administration, the article suggests ''an NPT for nonmembers" that allows the three nations to keep their weapons programs but restricts further development.

''The protocol could . . . require cooperation with international export controls, prohibit the explosive testing of nuclear devices, and call for the phased elimination of fissile material production," Cohen and Graham wrote.

Under such an agreement, the three would also be required to commit to work toward eventually disarming, as have the five declared nuclear powers under the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Some officials at the UN atomic agency, however, argue that treating the three countries as de facto weapons states in the NPT would set a dangerous precedent for other nations seeking nuclear arms.

ElBaradei says what he is seeking from Israel is a serious discussion about nuclear disarmament.

''We need . . . to rid the Middle East of all weapons of mass destruction," he said in Moscow.

''Everybody takes it as a given that Israel has a nuclear capability, if not nuclear weapons. . . . Whether they decide to maintain . . . ambiguity, it's for them to decide."