CAIRO, 25 March 2004 — Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak discussed weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the Middle East during talks here yesterday with UN nuclear watchdog chief Mohamed El-Baradei, an Egyptian official said.
El-Baradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, made no comment afterward on his visit.
But the Egyptian official said “fell within the framework of the call to create a zone free from weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East and to launch a dialogue associating Israel (with this) in order to install peace and security in parallel to (the evolution) of the Middle East peace process.”
Israel has never publicly acknowledged that it maintains a nuclear arsenal but foreign experts say it has used its reactor at Dimona in the southern Negev desert to produce between 100 and 200 nuclear warheads. The IAEA head “briefed Mubarak on the results of the agency’s last meeting concerning weapons of mass destruction in the region and the activities of the agency over this subject,” the Egyptian official said.
Mubarak has called several times for an international conference to be held to look into ways of making the Middle East a WMD-free zone. On his arrival Tuesday, El-Baradei said his talks would focus on the Middle East situation, the Libyan and Iranian nuclear dossiers, and the situation in Iraq.
He said, with giving a specific date that he would visit Iran “at the start of April” for “in-depth talks with officials in order to exhort them to continue showing transparency and complete cooperation with the agency.”
Jordanians Plead Innocentin Attack Conspiracy Case
Meanwhile, three Jordanians pleaded innocent in Amman yesterday to conspiring to carry out terror attacks against Americans and Israelis in Jordan.
The three men, in blue prison uniforms, stood quietly in the caged courtroom dock during the opening session of their trial in State Security Court. The military prosecutor charged them with conspiracy to commit acts of terror and illegal possession of a machine gun to be used in their attacks.
Asked by the judge how they responded to the charges, Mohammed Hassan Eidaili, 28, Mohammed Qassim Al-Borini Al-Najjar, 25, and Moussa Hamdan Al-Omoush, 27, each said “not guilty” at his turn.
