CAIRO Ñ Egypt maintains that Israel has transferred spent nuclear
fuel and other radioactive waste to their joint border in a move that has
damaged water resources in the neighboring Sinai Peninsula.
Egyptian officials have relayed reports to the United Nations that
Israel has transferred an undetermined amount of waste from its Dimona
nuclear facility in the eastern Negev to the western Negev near the Egyptian
border. The
officials said the waste includes tritium, a rare radioactive hydrogen
isotope with atomic mass.
Nuclear experts said tritium is used as an element in hydrogen
bombs. The isotope can also be used as a tracer for medical purposes.
Israel has refused to open the Dimona reactor to international
inspection. But Israeli authorities have rejected Egyptian assertions that
the burial of nuclear waste endangers the environment.
Ismail Ramli, an Egyptian water scientist for the UN, said traces of
tritium have been found in underground tables in the eastern Sinai
Peninsula. Ramli said tests have demonstrated an increase in tritium since
the early 1970s.
The Egyptian scientist said Cairo authorities would require additional
tests to determine the cause and source of the tritium. He said he and other
authorities have studied satellite photographs of the Dimona reactor,
located 65 kilometers from the Egyptian border.
Ramli told the London-based A-Sharq Al Awsat daily that the burial of
nuclear
waste in the lime formations in the western Negev desert has disrupted the
flow of underground water to the Sinai.
The Egyptian accusation comes amid a Gulf Arab study that urges Middle
East states to share water resources in an attempt to avoid a major
conflict. The Arab League-affiliated study by the Zayed Center for
Coordination and Follow-up said the Arab world is rapidly losing its
water resources and is increasingly relying on Ethiopia and Turkey.
The Abu Dhabi-based center reported that Arab per capita share of
potable water has dropped from 3,126 cubic meters in 1950 to 981 cubic
meters in 2000, the lowest figure of any region in the world. The study said
Arab states should cooperate in stopping Turkish control of the Euphrates
and Tigris and Israeli sharing of the Litani River in southern Lebanon.
"The water crisis in the Arab world has assumed serious economic,
political and legal proportions and it could snowball into a major
confrontation," the study said. "This should prompt all parties in the
region to reach collective agreements to organize the use of river water
while Arab states should develop a common stand towards Israel's demands for
a share of the Litani river in Lebanon or even the Nile, as well as Turkey's
attempts to control the flow of Tigris and Euphrates into Iraq and Syria on
the grounds they are cross-border rivers rather than international waters."
