UK academic: Israel should be pressed to sign NPT

The international community should exert more pressure on Israel to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, says the director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy, Dan Plesch.Plesch said it was discriminatory that Iran, which is an NPT signatory, should be subjected to sanctions over its civilian nuclear programme, while Israel is not despite having nuclear weapons in defiance of the treaty. “I think there should be much stronger pressure on Israel” to join the NPT from the international community,” he said in an interview with IRNA. “I agree it is a form of discrimination which should not be acceptable in international community,” said the director of the centre at London University's School of Oriental and African Studies. Plesch, a proponent of global nuclear disarmament, was chairing the latest annual conference at SOAS on a Middle East Weapons of Mass Destruction Free Zone leading diplomats and NGO representatives. This year's discussions come ahead of Britain, Russia and the US are organising an international conference in Finland on the issue in 2012. Plesch, who is also a visiting senior research fellow at Keele University, said the aims of the SOAS conference was to have a Middle East free from weapons of mass destruction and to reduce the risks of war, which were getting “much worse.” “Everyone has major responsibilities. There isn't anyone who doesn't have some form of obstacle they put in the path but equally I hope everyone can be constructive,” he told IRNA. The senior research fellow denied that there was a lack of publicity about Israel's illegal stockpile of nuclear weapons, which the British government amongst others remains coy to admit. But he said that he agreed that Israel, like the UK and other nuclear powers, should disarm and to balance it, he added that Iran should be a “great deal more transparent” about its civilian programme.