Qatar calls for subjecting Israel's N-facilities to IAEA safeguards

Qatar has called for intensifying international efforts to subject all Israeli nuclear facilities to International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards, and for Israel to join the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) as a non-nuclear state.This came in a statement delivered by HE the Chairman of the National Committee for the Prohibition of Weapons Dr Abdulaziz Salmeen al-Jabri at the annual general conference of the IAEA currently being held in Vienna, regarding Israeli nuclear capabilities.HE Dr al-Jabri explained that this demand was confirmed by international legitimacy resolutions half a century ago, including the resolutions of the UN General Assembly since 1974, Security Council Resolutions 487 of 1981 and 687 of 1991, numerous IAEA resolutions, and the resolution of the Review Conference of the Middle East Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1995, which called on Middle Eastern countries that are not signatories to the NPT to join the treaty and accept the IAEA safeguards system.Qatar urged the international community, and the three depository states of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, to bear a special responsibility in their capacity as permanent members of the Security Council that adopted the Middle East Resolution of 1995, to work to correct the course and take actual steps to achieve progress towards implementing the resolutions of international legitimacy, especially since Israel's accession to the treaty and subjecting all its nuclear facilities are under the IAEA's comprehensive safeguards regime which is a prerequisite for establishing a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the Middle East.Al-Jabri stressed that confronting nuclear proliferation in the Middle East is at the core of the tasks assigned to the IAEA, as the agency had a role within the framework of establishing a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the Middle East and applying the agency's full-scale safeguards to all nuclear activities in the region.The IAEA director-general was mandated to hold consultations with countries in the region to facilitate the early application of full-scale IAEA safeguards on all nuclear activities in the region as a necessary step towards establishing a nuclear-weapon-free zone.In its statement, Qatar appealed to the IAEA director-general to take an initiative to break the current impasse, stressing the need to keep the issue of Israeli nuclear capabilities under discussion within the agency's policy-making bodies.Qatar participated in the 67th session of the General Conference of the IAEA, held in Vienna from Sept 25-29, with a delegation headed by HE Dr al-Jabri, and with the membership of charge d'affaires of the Qatari embassy and to international organisations in Vienna Jamal bin Abdul Rahman al-Jaber.