Nuclear 'Double Standards'

By Andrew Woodcock, Press Association
Monday, 26 October 2009
Courtesy Of The Independent

...Colonel Gaddafi accused the international community of "double standards" because Israel is allowed to maintain a barely-hidden nuclear capability while Iran comes under massive pressure not to develop its own.

...asked if he would advise Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to do the same, he told Sky: "Iran, up to now, hasn't said it is manufacturing a nuclear weapon: Iran says it is enriching uranium.

"If Iran were to manufacture nuclear weapons, nuclear arms, then all of us, including us, will be against them. But Iran has not said so."

Denouncing the "double standards" which saw Iran treated differently from Israel, he added: "If the Israelis have the nuclear weapons and the nuclear capabilities, then it is the right of the Egyptians, the Syrians, the Saudis to have the same - even the Palestinians should have the same because their counterparts, or their opponents, have nuclear capabilities. Why not?

"Even the state of Palestine, when one day it is established, should have a nuclear capability because the counterpart of such a state, the Israeli state, already has nuclear capabilities.

"If we don't want this situation, we'll have to disarm the Israelis from their nuclear weapons and capabilities."