Egypt position on Regional Arms Control Process - Essay Example

It is noted that the success of the mission to stop the conflicts does not rest on an individual country but rather to the common pulling of all the countries. Any country intending to step-up their fight against the easy flow of the arms feels insufficient or senses of self betrayal as the rest of the region’s countries are still having lots of these arms in circulation. Common efforts to realize this mission have seen the organization of various conferences and seminars aimed at addressing this issue and many countries have been participation.

One such a conference was held in Madrid in 1991 where the issue of common efforts by the member countries as well as the international community was discussed in depth. This paper intends therefore to evaluate the position of Egypt as a critical party to this region. The country was well represented in the same conference where a number of peace missions and initiatives were agreed upon. The efforts for handling the security issue in the region dates back from the 1970s with negotiations between the member countries designing and proposing various mechanisms of handling the case.

Egypt is seen to have been very active in these talks. However, Egypt has been seen to take rather firm policies as regarded to nuclear weapons and this was seen to be in conflict with the proposal of Israel. The country was for the proposal that the issue be dealt with within the first stages of regional dis-arment process while Israel was not willing to assent to the proposal within the early level of the process (Hautecouverture and Mathiot 10-11). Through this, much of the deliberations that were done fro the Madrid process were futile.

Records indicate that Egypt has been the strongest supporter of the policy of WMDFZ (weapon of Mass destruction free zone) in the region. The idea was proposed by president Hosni Mubarak in 1990 and almost single handedly, the country forced the agenda to the inception by the international community though with the already discussed resistance by other states such as Israel. Madrid peace process initiated the ACRS (Arms Control and Regional Security) security working group through which the deliberations met on the conference were to be effected.

It was during this period (1990-1995) that Egypt’s critical role in the fight towards a region free of the weapons was observable. However, much of her efforts were directed towards winning the cooperation of the other countries and especially Israel towards directing the fight towards freeing the region from nuclear weapons though with little success. The failure of inception of Mubarak’s idea led to the country’s withdrawal from the subsequent peace talks as the country faced opposition from Israel.

Egypt prioritized the dealing with the weapons of mass destruction which interested states such as Israel felt threatened. Egypt advanced threats to water down the other efforts that the countries advanced over the process of disarming the region with the sole idea of pressurizing Israel to support the motion. Nevertheless, the threats were never attended to and the subsequent proceedings only found the initiative shelved and never to be discussed. This was one of the major setbacks that the ACRs faced in their role to restore the