Egypt regards Israel's possession of nuclear  weapons a top foreign policy issue that it insists on raising at the various international and regional forums to affirm the illegality of nuclear military capabilities, the Foreign Ministry has said.

A written statement delivered by Assistant Foreign Minister and Director of the Israel Department Ambassador Ahmed Ismail Wednesday night to a joint meeting of the People's Assembly Foreign Relations and Arab and National Security Affairs Committees, said Egypt's solid conviction is that the Middle East should be cleansed of all nuclear weapons and that a nuclear free zone should be established in the region in line with President Hosni Mubarak's initiative of 1999.

The statement was in response to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's latest admission that his country's possession of nuclear weapons.

The possession of such weapons in the Middle East, the statement said, sheds dire consequences on the strategic balance of power in the region.

Egypt's treatment of this issue is neither a spur of the moment reaction, nor did its efforts to master an international support against Israel's development of nuclear capabilities require a slip of the tongue on the part of Olmert, but it has been repeatedly raising the issue at all international gatherings since 1974, the statement added.

Although it was the first official Israeli admission of possessing nuclear weapons - it did not practically - introduce anything new, as it was known to all, it said.