Israel deflects charges it’s sabotaging Jordan’s civilian nuclear program

An Israeli official denied Wednesday that Jerusalem is trying to disrupt Jordan’s nuclear energy program.

The official dismissed charges by Jordan’s King Abdullah II that Israel is trying to thwart Jordan’s attempts to develop a nuclear energy program, the French news agency AFP reported.

“Every time that we were consulted on this we adopted a positive approach,” the official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity. “We were consulted and we always said that of course if this was done according to NPT [Non-Proliferation Treaty] regulations and supervision and everything, then fine, we have no objection.”

“When we started going down the road of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, we approached some highly responsible countries to work with us. And pretty soon we realized that Israel was putting pressure on those countries to disrupt any cooperation with us,” Abdullah had said, stressing that the program was aimed at addressing the country’s growing energy needs, and especially its power-hungry water desalination plants.

The king described a situation in which Israeli delegations persuaded potential partners for Jordan’s nuclear program to withhold their support.

Jordan and Israel signed a peace treaty in 1994.

“Nuclear energy will be the cheapest reliable way to desalinate water,” the king lamented. “Jordan will go only for the most secure, latest-generation reactor.”

Energy experts in Jordan demanded that the country abandon its plans to generate atomic energy in the wake of the nuclear disaster in Japan in 2011, AFP said.

The kingdom imports nearly all of its energy, largely from Egypt.

Since its supply of natural gas from Egypt has become unstable — the pipeline leading gas to both Israel and Jordan has been attacked more than a dozen times since 2011 — Jordan has struggled to find new alternatives for its energy requirements.