Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his visiting Italian counterpart, Romano Prodi, on Monday reiterated their countries’ determination to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.
”Iran cannot and should not have a military nuclear capacity,” said Prodi on his first visit to the Middle East since taking office in May last year.
”Iran’s refusal to abide by the requests of the United Nations Security Council furthers chances to strengthen the sanctions. This leads us down a path that no one wants to take,” he told a news conference after meeting Olmert.
The UN Security Council has adopted two sets of sanctions against Iran over its failure to heed ultimatums to suspend its uranium-enrichment programme, the process that produces fuel for nuclear power stations.
Israel, the sole, if undeclared, nuclear power in the Middle East, accuses the Islamic republic of seeking to develop a nuclear bomb, but Tehran insists that its programme is for civil purposes only.
After Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s repeated calls for the destruction of the Jewish state, Israel has come to consider Tehran’s nuclear programme as an ”existential threat”.
Olmert told the news conference that Israel ”will never accept that a country that threatens to destroy the state of Israel will one day possess a nuclear weapon, but I have confidence in the international efforts”.
He and Prodi also discussed ways to strengthen the new, Western-backed Palestinian government that President Mahmoud Abbas formed after the Islamist Hamas movement violently seized control of the Gaza Strip on June 15.
”We discussed efforts to improve ties with the Palestinian government and we agreed that the Gaza Strip remained an integral part of the Palestinian entity,” Olmert said.
Prodi urged Israel ”to do everything in its power to avoid a humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip” where more than 80% of the population depends on foreign aid imported mainly from Israel.
The two leaders also touched on the situation in southern Lebanon, where Italy has the largest contingent in the UN peacekeeping force monitoring the region since the end of last year’s war between Israel and the Shi’ite Hezbollah militia.
The international force in Lebanon has ”hampered Hezbollah’s capacity to rebuild its arsenal”, Olmert said.
On Tuesday, Prodi will go to Ramallah to meet Abbas, whose newly appointed moderate government — which rules in the West Bank only — has won the strong support of Israel and the international community. — Sapa-AFP