Well thank you so much for the introduction
and for organising this event in conjunction
with IPPNW.
It's been a pleasure to be here.
Thank you for this background information.
You have made my life easier and I'm going
to jump straight into the challenges that
are facing the region in terms of moving towards
a weapons of mass destruction free zone.
Just a quick background so that we're all
on the same page, the idea of a WMD free zone
in the Middle East is decades old.
It was first proposed by Egypt and Iran in
1990 and it aims to eliminate all of the classifications
of weapons of mass destruction, that includes
chemical weapons, biological weapons and nuclear
weapons, from all 22 Arab countries that are
members of Arab League, plus Iran and Israel.
So 24 countries need to abide by this agreement
ultimately.
And since then, it resurfaced in the 1995
NPT review and extension conference which
is paramount here, because it linked the development
and the establishment of the zone to the indefinite
extension of the nuclear non-proliferation
treaty, and in the 1995 conference, agreement
was made on two things: 1) that the NPT would
be extended indefinitely, but also that there
will be steps taken towards establishment
of the zone.
Unfortunately, since then, very little has
been done until 2010 when, again at the NPT
review conference, practical steps were taken,
ok, how do we actually achieve the zone.
And one of these steps that was prescribed
was to have a conference on the scope, the
mechanisms, and to understand how would it
become a reality by having the participation
of all of those countries.
Unfortunately, that conference that was scheduled
in 2012 did not occur because of a major obstacle
by the United States at that time, opposing
the conference on the basis that it will isolate
Israel.
Now, let's move forward to 2015, and another
attempt at a conference that failed again,
but as Chuck mentioned, there is some renewed
hope with the process that is outside the
NPT and is within the UN General Assembly
mandated resolution that called for a conference
and the first one occurred last year in November,
and it has a very simple mandate.
The mandate is: let's reach a treaty text
by all of these member countries, that is
arrived at freely and with consensus, and
then we can move forward on establishing the
zone.
It sounds easy, but I promise you it is very
difficult.
Now there was a major abstention in that conference,
that included Israel and the United States,
but the fact that the all 22 members of the
Arab League, plus Iran, and the P4, 4 members
of the UN Security Council, international
organisations and a handful of civil society
organisations that were there, gave us a lot
of hope that this will continue, the process
will continue, but meanwhile let's be clear-eyed
about what are the challenges facing the region
and here I want to just touch on them so that
we grasp around it and then I'll pass on to
my colleague Sharon who will then move on
to the solution component, because we are
here to, at least our hope is, to inspire
and to excite everyone in terms of ways forward
that are actually available to us to achieve
this goal of a WMD free-zone.
The five major WMD proliferation challenges
that are facing the region are Israel's nuclear
weapons, because they're the sole country
with nuclear weapons, so ultimately they have
to give up their nuclear weapons to be able
to join in to this zone, and how we go about
it, there are many avenues that I hope we'll
have more time later to discuss, 2nd is Iran's
nuclear programme and the threats that are
facing the Iran Nuclear Deal that occurred
in 2015 and President Trump withdrew from
in 2018, and that has brought a very important
multilateral process that resulted in our
ability to put Iran's nuclear programme on
a track towards a peaceful track that we can
observe and make sure that it doesn't divert
to weaponisation be now in great danger of
collapsing.
And as a process of diplomacy and the non-proliferation
treaty, it is very important to look into
the JCPOA, the Iran Deal, because it provides
a lot of verification, monitoring and other
avenues to make sure that nuclear programmes
remain peaceful.
3) is the chemical weapons that were used
in and continue to be used in Syria and the
lack of complete removal of those chemical
weapons stockpiles in the country, especially
while it's still going through this civil
and multi-layered war that is still raging
on in the country.
Now, this vacuum that has been created by
all of these multitudes of conflicts that
are happening in the region also brings about
the ability for extremist groups, or those
groups that are terrorist or otherwise, have
possible access to WMD materials that will
then be very dangerous in terms of the proliferation
of such materials and they have no, let's
say, state party to any international oversight
or treaties.
So this opens up a can of worms in a region
that is extremely volatile.
And of course, we have the ambitions of regional
countries such as Saudi Arabia and the United
Arab Emirates who are expanding their nuclear
programmes.
I mean the UAE just initiated and completed
and launched its first power plant and came
into operation, not that long ago, a few weeks
ago, and the problem here is, in a region
where we are constantly in fear of attacks,
conventional or otherwise, UAE's nuclear programme
and its power plants, not only causes a possible
human error in terms of environmental catastrophe
that Ira has elaborated on, but also the fact
that it can come under attack from conventional
attacks, such as the one that we saw on Saudi
Arabia's oil facilities, so by extension,
that nuclear plant can also come under such
attacks.
So this a cause of concern for the whole region
and for the security of the people in the
area and beyond.
Now, that's just WMD proliferation challenges.
Imagine how many other things there are there
when we talk about the over-militarisation,
the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran,
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and so forth,
but I want to stop here just so that you are
aware that we are clear-eyed about the fact
that these challenges are there, but we are
also very aware that if we do not pursue or
introduce avenues forward, that we may feel
like we are stuck in the mud.
And here I would like to pass on to Sharon
and I hope that she will give us some insights
and some optimism in terms of how we can actually
move forward and bring us closer to the establishment
of a WMD free zone in the Middle East.
I thank you for your time.
