Arab Nations Plan to Start Joint Nuclear Energy Program

[Wiilo]

Arab Nations Plan to Start Joint Nuclear Energy Program.

 

By HASSAN M. FATTAH

 

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, Dec. 10 — Arab leaders, meeting in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, on Sunday, said they intended to start a joint nuclear energy development program, a move certain to heighten concerns over a possible race for nuclear power in the oil-rich Persian Gulf.

 

Leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council concluded a two-day summit meeting in Riyadh on Sunday, agreeing to study how to proceed with development of such capacity.

 

At the same time, they called for a peaceful settlement of the crisis over Iran’s nuclear program, which the United States and some other Western nations say is for nuclear arms.

 

“The states of the region have a right to possess nuclear energy technology for peaceful purposes,” the summit meeting’s closing communiqué said, echoing Iran’s insistence that it, too, had the right to peaceful nuclear technology.

 

Publicly, officials of the gulf council said the development of a nuclear energy program would help meet their rising demand for electricity, despite the huge oil reserves.

 

“Nuclear technology is an important technology to have for generating power, and the gulf states will need it equally,” said Prince Saud al-Faisal, Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, speaking to reporters. “It is not a threat,” he said. “It is an announcement so that there will be no misinterpretation for what we are doing.”

 

But analysts and officials said the announcement had a different purpose — to warn the United States not to acquiesce to Iran’s nuclear ambitions as pressure grows on the Bush administration to reach out to Iran for help in stabilizing Iraq.

 

A report released by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group last week recommended that the United States open negotiations with Iran.

 

The predominantly Sunni Arab states fear that the United States may abandon Arab concerns to gain assistance from Iran, which could confirm Iran as the regional hegemon.

 

“The message is that the gulf countries will develop their own nuclear program if Iran is rewarded with the terms of the Baker-Hamilton report,” said Abdelaziz O. Sager, chairman of the Gulf Research Center in Dubai, who is familiar with the nuclear initiative. “They are trying to say that if the Iranian program continues, you will force us to become nuclear capable too.”

 

At a Persian Gulf security conference in Bahrain on Saturday, Iran’s foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, insisted that Iran was seeking only peaceful nuclear capacity.

 

“The time of nuclear weapons is over,” Mr. Mottaki said. He added that if nuclear weapons served as an effective deterrent, they should have stopped the fall of the Soviet Union and Israel would not have had to go to war in Lebanon against Hezbollah this past summer.

 

Saudi officials have warned that a nuclear Iran could cause a regional arms race, suggesting that Saudi Arabia would be forced to acquire nuclear technology, too.

 

King Abdullah said Saturday that the region was increasingly becoming “a powder keg ready to explode,” citing conflict in Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories, as well as the continuing Iranian nuclear crisis.

 

At least six Arab countries have reportedly sought to develop nuclear power programs, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco and Algeria.

[Somali_Friend]

The egyptians are super greedy. They want to use the Arab Farsi and Sunni Shiia issues to benefit them alone.

They know that they will be hired for these jobs, which thanks to American the egyptians have accumulated the structures and education for such.

They are looking for jobs also in the military to protect Arabs from Iran in the service of America.

 

The jeleousy of Egypt to Saudi Arabia is really devilish.

[Wisdom_Seeker]

You got something against egypt take it somewhere else.

 

I have family members who are egyptians! :mad: