Jordan denies involvement in nuclear cooperation with Israel

Mar 9, 2010, 20:06 GMT

Amman - The chairman of the Jordan Atomic Energy Commission on Tuesday ruled out any nuclear cooperation with Israel before an agreement is reached on the Arab-Israeli conflict.

'It is premature to speak about any form of regional cooperation with Israel before the conclusion of a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict,' Khalid Touqan was quoted as saying by the official Petra news agency.

The Jordanian official was responding to remarks by Israeli officials earlier this week about a plan to build a nuclear plant to meet the region's energy needs as a joint venture between Jordan and Israel, with France providing the know-how.

'The suggestion was based on an old verbal proposal voiced by the Israeli energy minister to his French counterpart several months ago,' Touqan said. 'We have not been aware of such proposal and we have nothing to do with it.'

Touqan restated Jordan's policy to cooperate in the nuclear sphere with countries that are signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which Israel failed to ink so far.

Jordan concluded a peace treaty with Israel in 1994, but the two countries have failed to establish full-fledged cooperation due to what Jordanians labelled a lack of desire on the part of the Jewish state to reach a peaceful solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict based on the two-state vision.

The Jordanian government concluded agreements with at least eight nuclear powers over the past couple of years to help the Hashemite Kingdom to set up its own nuclear reactors for peaceful uses.

Israel is widely believed in the Arab world to have developed nuclear arms at its Dimona plant in the south-east part of the country.