Bassiouni: Egypt refutes Israeli nuclear claims

"Egypt has signed the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1968 and ratified it in 1981, "said Mahmoud Bassiouni, the head of the Shura Council Foreign Relations and National Security Committee.

Bassouni, who is also a former Egyptian ambassador to Israel, in statements to the Egyptian TV on Saturday, denied press reports released recently to the effect that Egypt was developing secret nuclear programmes.

These reports by Israeli and US newspaper are completely groundless, said Bassouni, attributing the reports to a campaign against Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Mohammed AL Baradei, an Egyptian, whose term in office will end shortly and the US is trying to balk his efforts to win a third term in office.

The campaign aimed at lessening down his opportunity to get another term in office, said Bassouni.

A meeting that is held in New York, every five years, proposed in 1995 extending the NPT indefinitely but the Arab countries, including Egypt at the meeting rejected the proposal and asked that all the world countries should sign first the NPT, he pointed out.

Israel is the only country in the area which did not sign the NPT, he said.

The former Egyptian ambassador said Israel wants all the regional countries to sign the additional protocol of the NPT so that their nuclear facilities are subject to inspection but the Arab countries refused as Israel did not sign the original agreement.

Israel thus came to spread these claims now, he said.

Egypt's stance on this score is clear, namely, it wants the Middle East area to be free from all weapons of mass destruction, he noted.

Bassouni underlined that attaining peace for all the regional countries would require first that all these countries sign the NPT to render the region free from all weapons of mass destruction.