The United States has accepted Arab demands to pressure Israel over its atomic program to rescue talks aimed at making the Middle East free of atomic weapons.
The 189 signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) agreed on a detailed plan to curb the spread of atomic weapons, following a month of intensive talks.
The 28-page declaration, which Irish diplomats played a key role in drafting, was approved by consensus on the final day of a month-long conference in New York.
The creation of a nuclear-free zone could ultimately force Israel to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and abandon any atomic weapons it has.
But US officials, disappointed at efforts to single out the Jewish state, made clear the proposal might go nowhere, saying the Middle East could not be declared WMD-free until there was broad Arab-Israeli peace and Iran curbed its nuclear program.
The NPT review conference is held every five years to advance implementation of the 40-year-old treaty, the main international mechanism for curbing the spread of nuclear weapons.
The final document said UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and key states would arrange a conference that would include all nations in the region, by implication including bitter foes Israel and Iran.
At the same time, the declaration urged Israel to sign the NPT and put its nuclear facilities under UN safeguards, and also called on India and Pakistan, which have exploded nuclear devices, to join the pact.
The chief US delegate at the meeting, Undersecretary of State Ellen Tauscher, had opposed naming Israel in the declaration, saying it undermined the idea of the 2012 conference.
But Washington ultimately acquiesced on that point.
Afterwards, Washington - named as one of the co-sponsors of the proposed conference - quickly cast doubt on its chances of ever taking place.
While welcoming agreements on a range of non-proliferation issues at the UN meeting, US President Barack Obama said: "We strongly oppose efforts to single out Israel, and will oppose actions that jeopardize Israel's national security."
US national security adviser Jim Jones criticised the "gratuitous" attention paid to Israel and said it was deplorable that the resolution failed to mention Iran as the "greatest threat of nuclear proliferation" in the region.
Israel is presumed to have a sizable nuclear arsenal but neither confirms nor denies it. It is the only Middle East state that has not signed the NPT and, like India and Pakistan, did not participate in the review conference.
Ms Tauscher said Washington would work with countries in the region to organise a successful conference in 2012.
But she added that the US ability to do that "has been seriously jeopardised because the final document singles out Israel in the Middle East section, a fact that the United States deeply regrets."
Gary Samore, who oversees policy on weapons of mass destruction at the White House, said US vice president Joe Biden had warned Arab ambassadors in Washington this week that naming Israel in the final document would be a bad idea.
"The political symbolism of mentioning Israel in this way is very destructive," he told reporters on a conference call.
"I don't know whether this conference will even happen," Samore said. "We're not going to convene a meeting unless we believe the conditions are right for having that meeting."
There was no immediate reaction from Israel.
Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin welcomed the outcome of the conference, noting that nuclear disarmament efforts had been a foreign policy priority for successive Irish governments.
The final declaration, he said, represented a significant step forward even though the language adopted by the conference was “less strong” than Ireland and a majority at the gathering would have liked.
Mr Martin noted that the NPT is facing serious challenges, and he singled out proliferation threats posed by Iran and North Korea.
“The conference has responded by strengthening the implementation of the non-proliferation provisions of the treaty,” he said.
During the conference, Ireland worked with its partners in the “New Agenda Coalition” to hold nuclear-armed states to their treaty obligations.
“There have been some indications of a greater willingness on their part to acknowledge their nuclear disarmament obligations and be more open about their nuclear strategies,” Mr Martin said.
The White House insisted it would not put the Jewish state under any pressure nor encourage it to do anything that would undermine its national security. It also denied entering into a deal with Egypt and other Arab states on the WMD-free zone.
Diplomats familiar with the talks, however, said the United States had agreed with the Arabs not to block consensus on the declaration while making clear it would condemn the naming of Israel.
British delegate John Duncan told the meeting the text on the Middle East had involved "difficult compromise for all parties involved."
UN diplomats have said that one of the reasons Washington agreed to negotiate with the Arabs on the WMD-free zone was to secure their support for new UN sanctions against Iran.
The declaration also contained plans for further disarmament, strengthening global non-proliferation efforts and ensuring access to technology for peaceful uses.
The 1970 NPT is intended to stop the spread of atomic weapons, though it allowed the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia to keep their arsenals while calling on them to negotiate on disarmament.
The conference called on North Korea to give up nuclear weapons and return to the NPT, which it left in 2003.
Additional reporting: Reuters