US Secretary of State John Kerry arrives in Geneva yesterday, on the second day of talks with Iran on nuclear programme.
Tel Aviv: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned John Kerry yesterday he was offering Iran the “deal of the century” as the top US diplomat travelled to talks in Geneva seeking a nuclear accord.
Netanyahu vowed that Israel would not be bound by any international agreement on Iran’s nuclear programme and reserved the right to do whatever is necessary to defend itself -- a clear allusion to a pre-emptive military strike.
The United States rejected the remarks as “premature” while Iran accused Netanyahu of “fear mongering” and said Israel, the region’s sole if undeclared nuclear power, was “the major source of ... instability”.
Netanyahu met the US Secretary of State on the tarmac of Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv and denounced the proposed agreement being hammered out in Switzerland.
Kerry flew in from Amman for a brief stopover in Tel Aviv in a bid to soothe Israeli anger ahead of his trip to Geneva for a landmark three-way meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.
“Iran got the deal of the century and the international community got a bad deal, this is a very bad deal. Israel utterly rejects it,” Netanyahu told reporters of the proposals under discussion.
“Israel is not obliged by this agreement and Israel will do everything it needs to defend itself and the security of its people.” Israel views a nuclear-armed Iran as an existential threat and has consistently refused to rule out a pre-emptive military strike to prevent that from happening.
“I reminded him (Kerry) that he said that no deal is better than a bad deal. And the deal that is being discussed in Geneva right now is a bad deal,” Netanyahu said. “Iran is not required to take apart even one (uranium enrichment) centrifuge. But the international community is relieving sanctions on Iran for the first time after many years. “I urge Secretary Kerry not to rush to sign, to wait, to reconsider, to get a good deal,” Netanyahu said.
From Geneva, Zarif hit back at Netanyahu, saying Israel did not “have any credibility” while Kerry later warned there was no deal yet with the Islamic republic over its nuclear programme.
“It (Israel) is the only possessor of nuclear weapons in the region, the only non-member of the NPT (nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty), the only possessor of chemical weapons,” Zarif told Swiss television channel RTS.AFP
