Qatar calls for Israeli nuclear sites to be subjected to IAEA safeguards

The demand was put forward by the Chairman of Qatar’s National Committee for the Prohibition of Weapons, Abdulaziz Salmeen al-Jabri at the annual general conference of the IAEA, which is currently underway in Vienna, the official Qatar News Agency (QNA) reported on Friday.

Jabri further called for Israel to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

The Qatari official explained that these were legitimate demands that had been confirmed by “international legitimacy resolutions [that were passed] half a century ago”.

He named some of those resolutions as “resolutions of the UN General Assembly [that have been passed] since 1974, [United Nations] Security Council Resolutions 487 of 1981 and 687 of 1991, numerous IAEA resolutions, and the resolution of the Review Conference of the Middle East Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1995.”

The official reminded that Israel’s subjecting all of its nuclear facilities to the IAEA’s comprehensive safeguards regime and its accession to the NPT “is a prerequisite for establishing a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the Middle East.”

He “stressed that confronting nuclear proliferation in the Middle East is at the core of the tasks assigned to the IAEA…”

Israel, which pursues a policy of deliberate ambiguity about its nuclear weapons, is estimated to harbor 200 to 400 nuclear warheads in its arsenal, making it the sole possessor of non-conventional arms in West Asia.

The regime has, nevertheless, refused to either allow inspections of its military nuclear facilities or sign the NPT.