"The peace talks should be linked to this pivotal issue."These disputes inevitably focus attention on the most contentious claim of all. The Israeli Foreign Minister, Shimon Peres, failed to defuse the argument in talks with President Hosni Mubarak."The nuclear issue cannot be sidestepped," an official commentary on Cairo radio said. But the rest of the world believes Israel has at least 200 warheads and the Arab states show every sign of rejecting Western pressure to renew the NPT unless Israel is brought into the equation. Israel has not signed the NPT and claims it "will not be the first" to introduce nuclear weapons to the region. It casts doubt on its effectiveness and shows up conflicts among the weapons states.Western intelligence agencies are convinced that Tehran has a secret weapons programme, run by an shadowy inter-ministerial body, drawing members from the defence and nuclear ministries and reporting to the head of state, President Ali Khamenei.But Tehran is making the most of its symbolic claim that the peaceful nuclear aspirations of a developing nation are being denied by an "imperialist" nuclear club.In the past week, a dispute broke out also between Israel and Egypt at government level.
His Iranian counterpart, Mahmoud Vaezi, said Tehran was committed to sign but insisted that "corrections need to be made."The Iranian issue, like North Korea, highlights the problem of enforcement under the NPT. The US House Speaker, Newt Gingrich, says aid to Russia should be cut off if the Russians go ahead with a $1bn (£600m) contract to refurbish a reactor on the Gulf.Last Sunday, Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister failed to persuade Iran to sign an indefinite extension. They point to Article IV of the treaty that says signatories "have the right to... the fullest possible exchange of equipment, materials and scientific and technological information for the peaceful use of nuclear energy."Yet the US and its allies are intent on denying Iran, a signatory, technology for its nuclear programme.
"A majority of one is not much use," one diplomat said.Another dimension has been added by President Boris Yeltsin's recent statement in favour of a so-called Start 3 disarmament pact that would radically cut the arsenals of Russia and the US to levels that would call into question the right of Britain and France to maintain their independent deterrent forces at planned strengths.Foreign Office spokesmen spent much of last week denying a report in the Independent on Sunday, quoting Mr Ashdown, that Washington was about to press Britain to include its nuclear weapons in multilateral negotiations.Privately, senior officials concede that the climate of discussion in Washington has become sufficiently volatile to permit the airing of radical new theories, both inside and on the fringes of President Bill Clinton's administration.One important problem concerning British policy and the NPT renewal is that Third World states claim the NPT is not applied fairly. But senior officials in Whitehall admit that the task has become harder than they first thought. It is due to be renewed at a conference in New York in mid-April.British diplomats, headed by Sir Michael Weston, ambassador to the UN Disarmament Conference in Geneva, have up to now lobbied with apparent success to win the 86 votes needed to extend indefinitely the treaty by simple majority. But in fact the issue has already reached the international agenda and could become a definitive test of Britain's status at the United Nations and in the world. Last week, nuclear disputes involving Israel, the Arab countries, Iran, the US and Russia became public, complicating the process of winning votes for an indefinite extension of the treaty.The NPT has for 25 years enshrined only five nations as "weapons states" - Britain, the US, France, Russia and China. Britain may have to place its Trident nuclear deterrent on the bargaining table, as the United States and Russia seek the support of non-aligned states in their negotiations to renew the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and establish a new arms-control regime. The Government last week successfully played down a warning by the Liberal Democrat leader, Paddy Ashdown, of impending US pressure to do so.
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