TEL AVIV: The Israeli government is worried the Obama administration will allow a UN conference this week to adopt a resolution that could compel Israel to acknowledge its nuclear arsenal.

At issue is a proposal at the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference that would empower the UN secretary general to organize a conference to pursue a Middle East free of nukes and other weapons of mass destruction. Israel is one of three nuclear states (along with Pakistan and India) that have not signed the treaty. But unlike Pakistan and India, Israel has never formally acknowledged that it has nukes.

Egypt and other Arab states have pressed for a nuclear-free Middle East zone at this conference since the 1990s. In 2010, for the first time, the conference adopted language that laid out the first steps for achieving this zone. But to move forward and hold a conference on keeping nukes out of the Middle East, the group needed consensus support from the United States, Russia and Britain, three of five countries that the treaty acknowledges to have nukes. There was no consensus.

But this time it’s different. The Spanish delegation this year proposes letting the UN secretary general convene a conference on a nuclear-free Middle East, even without consensus support. In essence it would mean that Israel’s most important ally, the United States, would not be able to block the convention.

A senior Israeli official said: “Israel is increasingly concerned that the US is not going to prevent the NPT review conference currently meeting in New York from adopting a resolution on the Middle East that would jeopardize Israel’s national security.”