AFP: No Obama pressure on Israel over nuclear ambiguity: minister

[Poll_Blind]

Caught this on Google News:

JERUSALEM — US President Barack Obama, during this week's nuclear summit, put no pressure on Israel to shift away from its policy of deliberate ambiguity on its atomic programme, a minister said on Wednesday.

"The policy of ambiguity is the foundation of Israel's security; it has always been and will continue to be. President Obama did not ask to change it in the current period," Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon told public radio.

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Foreign military experts believe Israel has an arsenal of several hundred nuclear warheads, but Israel has never publicly acknowledged having atomic weapons, maintaining a policy of deliberate ambiguity since it inaugurated its Dimona nuclear reactor in 1965.

In 1969, Israeli leaders undertook not to make any statement on their country's nuclear potential or carry out any nuclear test, while Washington agreed to refrain from exerting pressure on the issue.

Like nuclear-armed countries India, Pakistan and North Korea, Israel is not party to the NPT in order to avoid international inspections.

Our favoritism to India and Pakistan on the matter, and outright charades in the case of Israel, deeply impair our ability to put any sort of realistic pressure on North Korea, for instance, to sign on.

PB