MUSCAT, 12 July 2004 — Mohammed El-Baradei, the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), paid a surprise visit to Israel last week, the purpose of which was to convince the Jewish state to join the list of states that have signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. It is a pity that Israel is the only country in the Middle East that still refuses to sign the agreement.

El-Baradei’s visit to Israel came as part of IAEA attempts to make the Middle East a nuclear-free zone which the UN watchdog launched six years ago.

Since then, its efforts have paid off and all countries in the region — bar Israel — have signed up to the treaty.

El-Baradei held a series of meetings with senior Israeli government officials, which were rounded off with a meeting with Ariel Sharon. What is the outcome of these meetings? Has the visit achieved its goals?

The truth is that El-Baradei has got no commitment from the Israeli government to open up its nuclear file or even to allow IAEA inspectors to visit its nuclear plant in Dimona in the Negev desert, south of Israel — a step which many countries with such plants in the region have readily agreed to.

Israel has made it clear that it would not change its dubious policy, which it describes as “strategic ambiguity”, on the pretext that it faces a continuous threat from Palestinian groups and “other enemies”, who receive assistance from outside the region, a veiled reference to Iran.

Cunning as they are, Israeli officials did not confine themselves to the lame excuses that are always raised to win the sympathy of international organizations. Instead, they attempted to use the occasion to turn the IAEA’s focus on Iran to exert more pressure on that country.

Israel alleges that Iran is continuing with its program of uranium enrichment, which, if left unchecked, would make it capable of producing a nuclear bomb by the year 2008. This far-fetched claim shows just how determined Israel is to find excuses to carry on with its own nuclear weapons program.

It also reveals how hell-bent the Jewish state is on threatening other states in the region that have already committed themselves to signing the nuclear non-proliferation agreement.

This rejection of regional and international bids to eliminate weapons of mass destruction from the Middle East was evident in almost all that Israeli officials said and did during El-Baradei’s visit, especially Sharon.

However, El-Baradei has sounded a positive note, declaring that the dialogue with Israel on the nuclear issue was held within the framework of the road map for peace in the Middle East. El-Baradei’s statement, at best, betrays no more than a limited optimism, but it will hardly help reduce the feeling of insecurity caused in the region by Israel’s nuclear arsenal, estimated by experts at 200 nuclear warheads.

To sum it up, the visit of the IAEA director has not achieved its desired results. At most it has helped reduce the anger of the Islamic states against the agency, which they have criticized for its apparent obsession with Iran while turning a blind eye to the much more real threat presented by Israel.

(Essa bin Mohammed Al-Zedjali is editor in chief of The Times of Oman.)