Jordan Times
Tuesday, August 17, 2004
Jordan to seek UN help to
assuage concerns about Dimona
Jordan said Monday it was preparing to invite UN experts to carry out
independent surveys in the Kingdom to eliminate any fear of contamination from
the Dimona nuclear plant in neighbouring Israel.
At a weekly news conference, Minister of State and Government Spokesperson Asma
Khader insisted that Jordan was free of any contamination from the ageing
Israeli reactor and reiterated that radiation levels were normal.
“In 2001, we asked a group of visiting experts from the International Atomic
Energy Agency [IAEA] to carry out a survey and their tests matched those of our
own experts and showed that our surveys were clean,” Khader said. “In order to
eliminate any fear or doubts, we are now ready to ask for a new survey,” she
added.
Her comments were made a day after Parliament's Health and Environment Committee
said it would formally ask the government to invite experts from the UN nuclear
watchdog to Jordan. They were also made a day after IAEA's Director General
Mohammad Al Baradei said in Cairo his agency was “prepared to send observers to
Egypt and Jordan to monitor whether there is any evidence of nuclear radiation
emanating from Israel.”
But Baradei stressed that the question of radiation from Dimona “should not be
linked to the observation by Israel of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty nor
inspection by the IAEA of Israel's nuclear activity.”
Fears of contamination from Dimona were raised in July by nuclear whistle-blower
Mordechai Vanunu, a former technician who served an 18-year prison sentence in
Israel for revealing secrets about the plant. Vanunu was quoted as saying by the
Arabic-language daily Al Hayat that the 40-year-old reactor in Israel's Negev
Desert could constitute a “second Chernobyl,” putting at risk Middle Eastern
countries.