Report suggests Obama press Israel over nuclear program
By Yossi Melman, Haaretz Correspondent Last update - 01:04 16/11/2008
www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1037539.html

The Middle East is in danger of accumulating large stocks of nuclear
material over the next decade that could be used to produce over 1,700
nuclear bombs, a U.S. research center has projected in a newly released
report.

The Institute for Science and International Security, headed by David
Albright, one the world's top experts on nuclear weapons and the prevention
of nuclear proliferation, recently released its report urging
president-elect Barack Obama to take a number of measures to avoid such an
outcome, including convincing Israel to halt production of its nuclear
weapons.

"The Obama administration should make a key priority of persuading Israel to
join the negotiations for a universal, verified treaty that bans the
production of plutonium and highly enriched uranium for nuclear explosives,
commonly called the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty (FMCT)," the institute
argued. "As an interim step, the United States should press Israel to
suspend any production of fissile material for nuclear weapons. Toward this
goal, the United States should change its relatively new policy of seeking a
cutoff treaty that does not include verification. The Bush administration's
rejection of the long-standing U.S. policy of requiring verification was a
mistake that the incoming administration needs to rectify."

Though Israel has never publicly admitted it has nuclear arms, it is largely
believed to possess about 200 nuclear warheads. Iran has defied the
international community for years by running a nuclear program which many
observers fear may allow it to obtain nuclear arms in the future.

More recently, several Middle Eastern countries including the United Arab
Emirates, Jordan, Egypt and Turkey announced their intention of building
nuclear power plants.

Though most countries said they want to build reactors in order to reduce
their dependency on fossil fuels as their sole source of energy, the
institute's researchers believe they also wish to create a nuclear
infrastructure in their own countries in light of the possibility that Iran
will obtain nuclear arms.

In the year 2020 a number of nuclear reactors in the Middle East are
expected to be completed, producing over 13 tons of plutonium. According to
the institute, a nuclear device requires only eight kilograms to be
assembled.

The institute believes the White House should strive to have Egypt, Iran and
Israel ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT). It also has
stated that the U.S. should discourage the reprocessing of irradiated power
reactor fuel both domestically and internationally.