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Israel offered to sell apartheid-era South Africa nuclear warheads in 1975, British newspaper The Guardian has reported.
According to documents obtained by the newspaper, a secret meeting between then-Israeli defense minister Shimon Peres and his South African counterpart PW Botha ended with an offer by Jerusalem for the sale of warheads "in three sizes".
The Guardian claimed on Sunday that those "sizes" referred to conventional, chemical and nuclear weapons.
The documents provide evidence that Israel has nuclear weapons despite its policy of "ambiguity" in neither confirming nor denying their existence.
The classified documents surrounding the agreement between the countries were uncovered by Sasha Polakow-Suransky, an American academic, during research for a book, the newspaper said.
The defense ministers also signed a broad-ranging agreement governing military ties between the two countries that included a clause declaring that "the very existence of this agreement" was to remain secret.
Startling revelations
Sunday's report added that the documents were proof that Pretoria wanted the weapons to keep neighboring states and other enemies from attacking them.
The report also said Israeli authorities attempted to keep the South African government from declassifying the documents.
According to The Guardian, the minutes of the meeting on March 31, 1975, record that: "Minister Botha expressed interest in a limited number of units of Chalet subject to the correct payload being available."
The document then records: "Minister Peres said the correct payload was available in three sizes. Minister Botha expressed his appreciation and said that he would ask for advice."
Polakow-Suransky, is also quoted as saying that Israel's offer to equip South Africa with atomic weapons was the result of the regime's need for a military deterrent and for potential strikes against neighboring states.
South African desire
"South Africa's leaders yearned for a nuclear deterrent - which they believed would force the west to intervene on their behalf if Pretoria were ever seriously threatened - and the Israeli proposition put that goal within reach," the Guardian quoted Polakow-Suransky as writing in his book published in the US this week, The Unspoken Alliance: Israel's secret alliance with apartheid South Africa.
But the alleged deal did not go through, according to Polakow-Suransky, although Israel did reportedly provide South Africa with 30 grams of tritium, the substance which provides thermonuclear weapons with a boost to their explosive power.
The delivery, according to The Guardian, was enough to build several atomic bombs.
The documents confirm accounts by Dieter Gerhardt, a former South African naval commander, jailed in 1983 for spying for the Soviet Union.
After his release following the collapse of apartheid, Gerhardt said there was an agreement between Israel and South Africa called "Chalet" which involved an offer by the Jewish state to arm eight Jericho missiles with "special warheads".
Israeli pressure
According to the paper, Gerhardt said these were atomic bombs. But until now there has been no documentary evidence of the offer.
The existence of Israel's nuclear weapons program was revealed by Israeli whistleblower Mordechai Vanunuto the Sunday Times in 1986.
He provided photographs taken inside the Dimona nuclear site but provided no written documentation.
According to The Guardian, Israel "pressured" the present South African government not to declassify documents obtained by Polakow-Suransky.
"The Israeli defense ministry tried to block my access to the agreement on the grounds it was sensitive material, especially the signature and the date," he told the paper.
"The South Africans didn't seem to care; they blacked out a few lines and handed it over to me. The ANC government is not so worried about protecting the dirty laundry of the apartheid regime's old allies."
Israel is widely believed to be the only nuclear-armed power in the Middle East, with around 200 warheads, but it has a policy of neither confirming nor denying that.
It has refused to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or to allow international surveillance of Dimona in the southern Negev desert.
PHOTO CAPTION
Israeli president Shimon Peres who was Israel's defense minister in 1975 when he offered nuclear weapons to South Africa
Source: Aljazeera.net
