Arabs won't press Israel resolution at UN nuclear meet-diplomats

Arab states are expected to refrain from targeting Israel over its assumed nuclear arsenal at the U.N. atomic agency's annual conference next week so as not to undermine wider efforts for a nuclear weapons-free Middle East, diplomats said.
   
This would be welcomed by Western states, which have been concerned that an Arab move against Israel would discourage the Jewish state from attending talks due to be held this year on banning such weapons of mass destruction in the volatile region.
   
"It is certainly positive," one Western envoy said.
   
The diplomats said Arab countries would as usual criticise Israel in the debate but, like last year, not submit a joint resolution on the issue to the Sept. 17-21 General Conference of the U.N.'s 155-nation International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
   
Western powers had been urging Arab envoys accredited to the IAEA not to put forward a non-binding but symbolically important resolution singling out Israel, which is widely believed to possess the Middle East's only nuclear arsenal.
   
They said this would have dashed any hopes for a proposed conference late this year, probably in Helsinki, on creating a zone without nuclear arms in the Middle East. Israel, like its arch-adversary Iran, has yet to say whether it will take part.
  
In a surprise move at last year's IAEA gathering, the Arab group decided not to zero in on Israel with a resolution on "Israeli Nuclear Capabilities" in what was called a "goodwill gesture" ahead of the planned 2012 talks.
   
Israel welcomed this as a "positive" development, in a rare conciliatory exchange in an otherwise heated debate that underlined deep Arab-Israeli divisions on nuclear issues.
   
An Egyptian plan for an international meeting to lay the groundwork for the possible creation of a Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction was agreed at a review conference on the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 2010.
  

REUTERS