VN: Israël moet Non-proliferatieverdrag ondertekenen

De Algemene Vergadering van de Verenigde Naties heeft maandag met overweldigende meerderheid ingestemd met een resolutie waarin Israël wordt opgeroepen snel openheid van zaken te geven over zijn atoomprogramma en inspecteurs toe te laten. Ook wordt er bij Jeruzalem op aangedrongen om een topconferentie over het uitbannen van kernwapens in het Midden-Oosten te steunen.

De resolutie werd met 174 stemmen voor, zes stemmen tegen en zes onthoudingen aangenomen. In de resolutie staat dat Israël 'zonder verdere vertraging' het Non-proliferatieverdrag (NPT) moet ondertekenen en zijn nucleaire faciliteiten open moet stellen voor inspecteurs van het Internationaal Atoomenergie Agentschap (IAEA). De Verenigde Staten, Canada, Israël, de Marshall-eilanden, Micronesië en Palau stemden tegen de resolutie. (Trouw 04.12.2012)

The Israel Lobby Archive:
The Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC) and the diversion of US government weapons-grade uranium to Israel

Since the mid-1960s law enforcement and regulatory agencies suspected a small nuclear processing facility in Pennsylvania had illegally diverted U.S. government-owned weapons-grade nuclear material into Israel's clandestine nuclear weapons program. The Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation received start-up capital organized by a mysterious former smuggler with deep and ongoing ties to Israeli intelligence. FBI investigations revealed NUMEC President Zalman Mordecai Shapiro also had repeated unexplained interactions with Israeli intelligence and organized a joint venture with the primary front organization of the Israeli nuclear weapons program. According to a 2001 US Department of Energy report, NUMEC still holds the record for the highest losses of bomb-grade material of any plant in the United States.

In April 1976 Attorney General Edward Levi ordered the FBI to reopen an investigation into Dr. Zalman Shapiro and the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC). The newly reopened investigation looked beyond violations of the Atomic Energy Act. The FBI's new mandate was to also uncover "any attempt by anyone in the executive branch to prevent or impede an investigation into this alleged diversion, or to withhold any information regarding this alleged diversion from any investigative body." The FBI code-named its investigation "DIVERT." The FBI interrogated high-level officials from U.S. government agencies and NUMEC employee eyewitnesses to nuclear diversion. Inexplicably, on January 23, 1981 the FBI placed the NUMEC investigation into "closed status" until further instructions from the Department of Justice. Field offices were ordered not to destroy files without instructions from FBI headquarters. The NUMEC investigation portfolio, which had passed from LBJ, to Nixon, and on to Ford was closed at the end of the Carter administration. → Lees de documenten

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