Israel to Host Nuclear Treaty Conference With Muslim States

Israel will play host next week to a conference that deals with nuclear testing. The conference is expected to be attended by as many as 100 representatives from the Arab and Muslim world, including delegates from countries that do not even recognize Israel as a state.

Israel’s Maariv reported that security forces and Jerusalem’s Foreign Ministry have pledged to offer a high level of protection for all the delegates attending the conference.

The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) conference will analyze the results of an experiment that tested how the international body would be able to identify and react to nuclear experiments. The test was carried out in Jordan in November 2014.

An additional 20 experts from the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will also be on hand to host a workshop in Tel Aviv on related issues, Haaretz reports.

The 183 countries that have signed off on the 1996 United Nations Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty have agreed to ban testing that involved nuclear explosions in any environment. Since the treaty’s announcement, only three countries–India, Pakistan and North Korea, which have not signed or ratified the treaty–have carried out nuclear tests.

Between 1945 and 1996, over 2,000 nuclear tests were carried out by different countries, with over 1,700 of the experiments conducted by the U.S. and Soviet Union during the Cold War, according to the CTBTO website.

Notably, Israel, Iran, and the United States are signees of the treaty, but have not ratified the accord.

The organization’s president, Dr. Lassina Zerbo, said that he believed Israel would “probably” ratify the agreement soon. “The message I’m getting is not ‘if’ but ‘when’,” he said last year.

“Through this exercise, we have shown the world that it is absolutely hopeless to try to hide a nuclear explosion from us,” said a statement by Dr. Zerbo on the group’s website. “We’ve now mastered all components of the verification regime, and brought our on-site inspection capabilities to the same high level as the other two components, the 90 percent complete network of monitoring stations and the International Data Centre,” he added.