Member states of the UN nuclear watchdog have locked horns over a draft resolution tabled by Arab states calling on Israel to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and allow the UN inspect its nuclear programme.
Israel has not signed the NPT and has never officially admitted to having nuclear weapons. However, non-proliferation experts estimate that Israel has from 100 to 200 nuclear bombs.
"There is a sharp divide among IAEA members on the issue of Israel and some countries, like the United States, don't want to compromise with the Arabs," a Western diplomat told journalists on Friday.
On Wednesday, 15 members of the Arab League submitted to the International Atomic Energy Agency general conference of the 137 member states the draft resolution which said Israel was the only nuclear power in the Middle East.
The Arab states try every year to pass similar resolutions. The last time they were successful was in 1991. Since 1987, the IAEA general conference and U.N. General Assembly have passed 13 such resolutions. All of them have been ignored by Israel.
Resolutions at the IAEA are usually not voted on, but are passed by concensus once a text has been negotiated which is satisfactory to all member states. However, diplomats said that the draft resolution on Israel had divided the members.
Diplomats said the Arab nations were willing to withdraw the resolution provided the president of the conference - Japan's ambassador to the IAEA - issued a strong "president's statement" expressing concern about Israel's atomic programme.
But one Western diplomat said that he and other diplomats from the West had received "strong instructions" from home not to move far on the subject of Israel's nuclear programme.
"Perhaps we will reach some sort of compromise with the Arabs, but we can only offer them very little," he said. "They want a strong condemnation of Israel and we don't."
In sharp contrast to the topic of Israel, the IAEA conference passed by consensus a Canadian-sponsored resolution repeating the IAEA's calls for North Korea to abandon any nuclear weapons, rejoin the NPT and readmit IAEA inspectors.
In February, the IAEA board declared Pyongyang in violation of its NPT obligations and notified the U.N. Security Council. Since then, the issue of North Korea has been out of the hands of the IAEA, though the Security Council has taken no action.
North Korea expelled the IAEA's inspectors on News Year's Eve and soon later announced it was withrdrawing from the NPT.
The North Korean crisis arose last October, when the United States said Pyongyang had admitted to enriching uranium for use in nuclear weapons.