JERUSALEM, May 4 (Reuters) - Israel has tried to defuse Egyptian lobbying against it at a U.N. nuclear review meeting by urging Cairo at top-level talks to view Iran's atomic ambitions as the regional threat, an Israeli official said on Tuesday.
The message was relayed by the delegation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who met Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Sharm el-Sheikh on Sunday as the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) review conference began in New York. While both sides said the Sharm talks focused on peace efforts with the Palestinians, there was also a brief discussion of Egypt’s call on Western powers to support its longstanding demand that Israel join the NPT, a senior Israeli official said.
"Remember, Iran is the real problem," the official quoted an Israeli delegate as telling the Egyptians.
NPT-member Iran denies Western suspicions that it is secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons capability. But its often opaque nuclear plans and vituperation towards Israel have stirred fears of war. Many Arabs are also wary of Persian power.
Asked to characterise the response from Mubarak’s delegation, the official said: "They know Iran is the problem, but they feel they can’t support a campaign against Iran without also putting pressure on Israel."
Some 189 nations convened for the month-long U.N. meeting to discuss means to shore up the fraying NPT, which dates to 1970.
By staying outside the NPT, Israel has not had to forswear nuclear arms nor admit U.N. inspectors to facilities where analysts believe it produced the region’s only atomic arsenal.
Eyeing a largely hostile region, Israel is secretive about its capabilities, but Arabs and Iran are aggrieved by the idea of an Israeli nuclear monopoly enjoying tacit U.S. backing. Such complaints are not lost on the Obama administration, which has reached out to the Muslim world and seeks consensus at the NPT conference as part of a wider nuclear disarmament drive that Washington says should ultimately rope in Israel too.
MIDEAST MEASURES
Western diplomats have said the United States, Britain and France — among U.N. Security Council powers trying to step up up sanctions against Iran — may try to accommodate Egypt at the conference by encouraging Israel to join proposed talks about measures to rid the Middle East of weapons of mass destruction.
That initiative would require Israel to sign the NPT, says Egypt, which has publicly described curbing Israel’s assumed nuclear arms as a higher priority than Iran’s latent abilities. Israel has voiced interest in the regional initiative but says it would have to be predicated on a comprehensive peace agreement with its Arab and Islamic adversaries.
"Egypt has always pursued the NPT issue, but all the prime ministers have known how to tread along — in the face of Egypt’s opposition, which has always been fundamental — a parallel path of talks and dialogue," Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, an Israeli cabinet minister and ex-defence chief who accompanied Netanyahu to Sharm el-Sheikh, said in a radio interview.
Israel is very sensitive to any perceived challenge to its self-styled "nuclear ambiguity" policy — especially from its most important ally, the United States, or other Western powers.
The Obama administration has championed the vision of a WMD-free Middle East but echoed misgivings about how this might be implemented while some states do not recognise Israel.
But Egypt suggested that merely broaching a deal for nuclear disarmament could bring about de facto engagement between foes.
"If major countries wish to address Iran’s nuclear dossier, they can do that by bringing Israel and Iran to the negotiating table," Egypt’s U.N. Ambassador Maged Abdelaziz told Al-Ahram newspaper in an interview last week.
"That would allow the meeting to confront them and address their nuclear fears," he said. "Iran may end up having to make some concessions in return for Israel doing the same, or for Israel agreeing to the creation of a nuclear-free zone and disposing of its ill-defined nuclear capabilities."
