- Israel is considering a military strike to destroy the
nuclear programme of Iran, now regarded as Tel Aviv's number one
enemy.
-
- The Israeli daily Haaretz cited defence minister Shaul
Mofaz as telling Israel radio's Persian service last week that if a
decision
was made to destroy Iran's nuclear capability, "necessary steps will
be taken so that Iranian citizens will not be harmed".
-
- Since the collapse of Saddam Hussein's rule in Iraq,
Israel has come to regard the Islamic government in Tehran as its number
one enemy.
-
- This is despite Iran's acceptance of a tough new
international
inspections regime for its nuclear facilities last week.
-
- Meir Dagan, head of Israel's Mossad overseas intelligence
service, told MPs last month that Iran's nuclear programme posed the
biggest
threat to the existence of Israel since its creation on the land of
Palestine
in 1948.
-
- "If a decision was made to destroy Iran's nuclear
capability, necessary steps will be taken so that Iranian citizens will
not be harmed"
-
- Shaul Mofaz, Israeli defence minister Dagan said Israel
had discovered in recent months that Iran was close to finishing
construction
of a uranium enrichment plant in the central Kashan area, which could
eventually
give it the capacity to build around a dozen nuclear bombs.
-
- The Iranian-born Mofaz said in a speech at a security
conference near Tel Aviv that Iran was "a terror-supporting
country".
-
- In a visit to Washington in November Mofaz called
Tehran's
nuclearisation "insufferable".
-
- NPT progress
-
- Iran won plaudits from the international community by
signing on Thursday the additional protocol of the nuclear
Non-Proliferation
Treaty which opens the way for snap UN inspections of suspect sites.
-
- Its acceptance of the protocol was part of a deal
brokered
by Britain, France and Germany in October to address US-led concerns about
its nuclear programme.
-
- Israel is the only country in the Middle East which is
known to have nuclear weapons. It is believed to possess about 200 nuclear
warheads and has not signed the NPT.
-
- An Israeli attack on an incipient Iraqi nuclear reactor
near Baghdad in 1981 set back Saddam Hussein's ambitions to develop a
nuclear
weapon.
-
- Iran praises Libya
-
- Iran on Sunday hailed Libya's decision to scrap its
weapons
of mass destruction programme and called for pressure to be placed on
Israel
to do the same.
-
- Libya agreed on Friday to disclose the country's WMD
programmes and open the country to international inspectors to oversee
their elimination.
-
- "Iran believes that the whole world should move
along the path of destroying such weapons," Foreign Ministry spokesman
Hamid Reza Asefi told a news conference.
-
- Asefi urged the international community to press harder
on Israel to comply with international law on its alleged nuclear
programme.
-
- "It is the time for the world to push for Israel's
disarmament as the main threat to the region," he said.
-
- US President George Bush, who praised Libya for taking
"essential steps" on the arms programmes, in a clear reference
to Iran and North Korea's disputed nuclear programme, said: "I hope
that other leaders will find an example in Libya's
announcement".
-
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- © 2003 Aljazeera.Net
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- http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/
76332C2C-23BA-4FEA-A707-F12FE9534CD3.htm
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