ISRAEL:PRIME MINISTER Ehud Olmert says he now believes the international community will succeed in blocking Iran from going nuclear.
This assertion, made in interviews on the eve of the Passover holiday, constitutes the most unequivocal comment yet by an Israeli leader on Iran's nuclear programme.
"I want to tell the citizens of Israel: Iran will not have nuclear capability," Mr Olmert told the daily Haaretz newspaper in one of several interviews he gave ahead of the Jewish holiday.
"The international community is making an enormous effort - in which we have a part, but which is being led by the international community - so that Iran will not attain non-conventional capability. And I believe, and also know, that the bottom line of these efforts is that Iran will not be nuclear."
Up until now, Israeli leaders have tended to be more ambiguous when asked about Iran's nuclear programme, which it believes is bent on building a nuclear bomb. Iran insists its nuclear programme is purely civilian in nature.
With the US having seemingly dropped the option of military action against Tehran, Mr Olmert's comments suggest a new-found Israeli belief in the possibility of denying Iran a nuclear capability via diplomatic means.
Iran, the prime minister said, did not just pose a threat to Israel. "The words of the Iranian president . . . about wiping Israel off the map, his suggestions that we move to Alaska or Germany, constitute a direct threat," Mr Olmert told the daily Ma'ariv. "But this is not just a threat to us, but to all of western civilisation. To its values, its culture, its freedom."
Asked about a recent comment by infrastructure minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, who warned that if Iran attacked Israel it would trigger an Israeli response that would result in "the destruction of the Iranian nation", Mr Olmert said what was needed in countering Iran were actions and not words. "The less we talk, the better," he told Ma'ariv. "We mustn't issue threats, like the things I heard recently."
Israel's housing ministry, meanwhile, yesterday published tenders for the construction of 100 new homes in the West Bank. Housing minister Ze'ev Boim said the homes would be built in the settlements of Elkana and Ariel and that these would be part of the major settlement blocs the government wanted to keep in a final settlement with the Palestinians.
Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas denounced the move, saying that the expansion of settlements was "an obstacle, a main obstacle" to progress in talks.