According an article in The Guardian a historic conference bringing Iran and Israel together with Arab states to discuss a ban on nuclear, chemical and biological weapons in the Middle East is scheduled to take place in Helsinki in December, it has emerged. The Finnish organisers of the UN-backed bid to establish a zone free of weapons of mass destruction are said to be cautiously optimistic that the conference will go ahead despite high tensions in the Gulf. The Finnish team has held about 70 meetings with officials in the region and made repeated trips to Israel and Iran since the veteran diplomat Jaakko Laajava was appointed "facilitator" of the consensus in October. So far, none of the countries invited to Helsinki has turned the invitation down.

Brussels conference could help pave way for full international conference on banning weapons of mass destruction in Middle East.

Israel's official position is neither to confirm nor deny its widely reported nuclear arsenal, and it would consider signing the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, thereby renouncing its right to have such weapons, only if its existence and its right to exist had been guaranteed by its neighbours and the region was at peace.

Nevertheless, European mediators hope the UN conference will initially represent a way of coaxing Israel into more transparency in return for continued Arab and Iranian abstinence from nuclear weapons under the increasingly strained treaty.