Sue Surkes is The Times of Israel's environment reporter
General view of the board of governors meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA, at the International Center in Vienna, Austria, Monday, March 7, 2016. (AP Photo/Ronald Zak)
Arab members of the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency will refrain this year from trying to pressure Israel into nuclear transparency until a revision of their strategy yields results, the Reuters news agency reported Wednesday.
Arab League Ambassador to the UN Wael Al Assad told Reuters that this will be the first time in three years that a resolution will not be submitted at the IAEA’s general conference, which meets in a week’s time.
The last time such a resolution succeeded was in 2009, but it did not force the UN to watch Israel’s nuclear activity any more closely, Reuters reported.
“We need to deal with this in a more results-oriented way,” Al Assad said. “We are not interested in resolutions that have no implementation mechanism.
“We need to seek other means and policies; we are now in a process of revision (until next March),” he told Reuters. He did not go into what changes were being considered.
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Arab League diplomats attend a meeting at the league’s headquarters in Cairo on January 5, 2015. (AFP/Mohamed el-Shahed)
Israel maintains a policy of so-called nuclear ambiguity, neither publicly confirming nor denying the existence of an atomic arsenal.
On Thursday, former US secretary of state and four-star general Colin Powell alleged that Israel possesses some 200 nuclear weapons, in an email apparently leaked by Russian hackers.
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