Saudi Arabia called Wednesday on the international community to pressure Israel, being the only party in the Middle East that hasn’t joined the treaty as a non-nuclear state. It shed light on the importance of subjecting all its nuclear facilities to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) comprehensive safeguards agreement as set out in Security Council resolutions 487 and 689. The Kingdom also warned against potential perils of an Iranian nuclear plant on the Gulf region. Iran’s Bushehr nuclear reactor is located around 200 km from the Arabian Gulf along an active earthquake zone. “Any radioactive leakage puts the region at a grave and serious danger to its air, food and water desalination stations,” said Saudi Deputy Chief Delegate to the UN Khalid Bin Mohammad Manzalawi. In his remarks during the third Preparatory Committee for the 2020 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference, which was held at UN’s headquarters in New York, Manzalawi urged the UN and the IAEA to push Iran to sign the Convention on Nuclear Safety. He said the Kingdom was among the first countries to accede to the NPT and the IAEA’s comprehensive safeguards agreement, out of its belief that global security and peace couldn’t be achieved with the existence of such weapons. He also stressed the importance of efforts to eliminate nuclear weapons, which begin by recognizing the international community’s need to adopt the existing treaties and legal and ethical frameworks aimed at having a world free of nuclear weapons. “Establishing security and stability in any region is not brought about by possession of weapons of mass destruction, but it can be fulfilled by cooperation and consultation among countries and pursuit of development,” the Saudi diplomat said. He pointed out that the Kingdom affirms that the second decision on the Middle East is an integral part of the outcomes of the resolutions that led to the adoption of the indefinite extension of the Treaty on the NPT.