Egypt has no intention of entering into a nuclear race with Israel, but will continue to urge it to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The nuclear issue, brought to the forefront of world attention by the Indian and Pakistani tests, was touched upon briefly during a meeting on Tuesday between President Hosni Mubarak and Israeli Defence Minister Yitzhak Mordechai. Mubarak, who has campaigned for the elimination of nuclear weapons from the Middle East since the early 1990s, said afterwards: "We have demanded that the region be free of weapons of mass destruction." But on Tuesday, he went further, calling for world nuclear disarmament. "There must be a determination to eliminate all nuclear weapons in the world in the next few years. There can be an international treaty in this connection," Mubarak said. Mordechai brushed aside a question whether Israel is ready to sign the NPT. "We would like to sign a peace treaty first," the defence minister said, in an allusion to the stalled talks with the Palestinians. "We are living in the Middle East, not India or Pakistan." Earlier, Foreign Minister Amr Moussa, voicing Cairo's concern, said the Indian and Pakistani tests had "unleashed a strong wind to blow in the face of the NPT. Now is the time to put into action President Mubarak's initiative to make the Middle East a nuclear weapon-free zone," he said. Israel is the only Middle Eastern power that has a nuclear arsenal and it is closed to international inspection. "Israel has to join the NPT now or else the treaty will be devoid of meaning for the countries of the Middle East, and the credibility of the whole non-proliferation system will be in question," Moussa said. Mustafa El-Fiqi, the Egyptian representative at the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in a telephone interview with Al-Ahram Weekly, said the Indian and Pakistani tests signalled the start of a "new stage", in which developing countries would spend money on nuclear weapons, instead of channelling funds to economic and social development. "It is a bad sign for all of us, particularly in the Middle East," he said. El-Fiqi said that Israel will have to show "good will" by signing the NPT. "We will fight for President Mubarak's initiative to declare the Middle East a nuclear weapon-free zone," he said. In another telephone interview from Vienna, Mohamed El-Baradei, the Egyptian director-general of the IAEA, acknowledged that banishing nuclear weapons from the Middle East will take some time due to Arab and Israeli differences. "The Arab states believe that such a step should precede the peace agreements, but the Israelis think it should come at the end of the process," El-Baradei said. He suggested that the two processes should go parallel to each other, but conceded that "how fast we will have a nuclear free zone in the Middle East will depend on the progress of a comprehensive peace process." El-Baradei denied that the IAEA was using double-standards in dealing with the acquisition of nuclear weapons. "Sometimes, the cases of Iraq and Israel are cited as an example of double standards," he said. "But the comparison is not valid because Iraq has committed itself not to acquire nuclear weapons while Israel, India and Pakistan did not undertake any legal obligation." Fawzy Hammad, former chairman of the Egyptian Atomic Energy Agency currently working for the IAEA, ruled out the possibility of a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. The Arabs, he asserted, are committed to the NPT. Hammad went on to warn, however, that the Indian and Pakistani tests could unleash a state of "nuclear chaos" in the world. There is a number of Third World countries which possess a nuclear weapons capability, he said citing such countries as South Africa, Argentina and Brazil, and these might be tempted to follow suit. Mohamed Shaker, Egypt's former representative at the IAEA and a former ambassador to London, agreed with El-Fiqi that Egypt should not get embroiled in a nuclear weapon race with Israel. "Our security is better served if we have no nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East," Shaker told the Weekly. "Therefore, we have to focus on this, rather than embark on an arms race in the region." Shaker disclosed that while Shimon Peres was prime minister in Israel, he agreed with Foreign Minister Moussa on the principle of mutual inspection. "They discussed mutual inspection, that we would inspect Israeli installations and they would inspect ours," he said. But the negotiations fell through, he said, because Israel insisted that the Dimona reactor be excluded from the deal, offering to open the smaller reactor at Be'er Ya'akcov, southeast of Tel Aviv. The situation was completely changed after Binyamin Netanyahu came to power, Shaker said. Nevine Khalil; Omayma Abdel-Latif; Dina Ezzat
